Human evolution and Jesus’ incarnation

 

Human evolution and biblical genealogies versus the ancestry of Jesus—a challenge to theistic evolution

 

23 December 2025

By Philip Bell

Reprinted from Creation Ministries International

 

In this short article, we’ll explore an interesting but important point that generally goes unnoticed in the debate over human origins.1 It is one which, surprisingly enough, directly connects to the biblical record of the genealogy and birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

According to a secular view of history, humans and chimpanzees are cousin species which split and diverged from a common ape-like ancestor about seven million years ago—a story of gradual evolutionary change over several hundred thousand generations.

In contrast, the Bible explicitly teaches that all people are descended from Adam and Eve (1 Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 3:20; Acts 17:26), which would be less than 300 generations ago.2 Christians who take Genesis 1–11 as the genuine record of earth’s early history believe in a literal descent of all human beings from Adam and Eve. This historical couple were supernaturally created by God. However, many professing Christians try to force-fit the biblical account with the evolutionary story.

Theistic evolution and the ancestry of Jesus

Different theistic evolutionists understand ‘Adam and Eve’ in a variety of ways, but to apply any of their ideas consistently requires that our first parents shared organic ancestry with animals. Some say that Adam and Eve were a Neolithic couple whom God selected from among thousands of their living contemporaries. Others argue that they were simply representatives of humanity, mythical figures, perhaps a metaphor, or some combination of these. Whichever option is chosen, humanity’s alleged animal ancestry is part and parcel of theistic evolutionary teaching.

“If theistic evolution is held consistently, one must maintain that … Jesus was descended from Adam, the offspring of soul-less hominids.”

The implications of these contrasting opinions are thrown into sharp relief if we consider the genealogy of Jesus in Luke chapter 3. After listing 74 ancestors in his line (vv. 23–38), Luke states plainly that Seth (the 74th name) was, “the son of Adam, the son of God”. In other words, we can ask whether Adam was the son of a hominid (as most theistic evolutionists maintain) or else the son of God. Can both be true? If theistic evolution is held consistently, one must maintain that the following propositions are both correct:

  1. Jesus was “the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli … the son of Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:23 & 38).
  2. Jesus was descended from Adam, the offspring of soulless hominids who themselves hailed from progressively more primitive animal ancestors, stretching back into antiquity.

This fairly represents one of the implications of the theistic evolutionary position. Perhaps it has not occurred to some of its advocates. However, many Christians would surely find such a belief bizarre, if not insulting to Christ. Following theistic evolutionary teaching to its logical conclusion, Jesus Christ, though born of a virgin, had part-human/part-ape ancestors, which themselves descended from apes!

Genealogy matters

Paul calls Christ, “the last Adam” and “the second man” but also, “the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:45, 47, & 49 respectively). There is a great need for reverence and care in considering the mystery of the union of Christ’s divine and human natures.3 Nevertheless, it seems appropriate to ask theistic evolutionists whether or not the idea of ‘the heavenly man’ being simultaneously a highly-evolved descendant of ape-like animals really sits comfortably in their minds.4 Consider too that the Bible emphatically declares that the Lord Jesus still retains his manhood, having ascended into heaven: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5; my emphasis).

Do not these implications of theistic evolution (that Jesus, albeit descended from Adam, ultimately has animal ancestry) act as a siren warning that something is deeply wrong with such a viewpoint?

It is no accident that the genealogy in Luke 3, and a similar genealogical list in Matthew 1, appear very early in these gospel accounts, providing a historical foundation for the miraculous birth of the long-promised Messiah. They show Jesus’ descent from King David, Abraham, Noah, and right back to Adam. The very first words of the New Testament are “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ…’ (Matthew 1:1). In fact, in the original Greek, ‘genealogy’ is the second word of the New Testament. For Jews in the New Testament period, reading or hearing these genealogical lists, their minds would have been cast back to similar genealogies in the Old Testament, especially Genesis 5 and 11:10–31.

How sad, then, that so many leaders and theologians in today’s Christian Church refuse to accept as history the names and the chronology taught in those chapters; yet they are important chronogenealogies.5 It is beyond argument that all the New Testament writers, the apostles, and the Lord Jesus Himself accepted this history; see Jesus on the age of the earth.6 On this point, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that theistic evolutionists are giving preference to popular opinion (the views of fallible, sinful human beings) over God’s opinion.

“Christ Jesus did not come from some sort of soulless hominid. The last Adam is “Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord, … the incarnate Deity.”

As 2025 draws to an end, many Christians around the world will sing carols to God’s praise, in celebration of the amazing and glorious truth that Immanuel has come, who is “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23). The “last Adam” came to provide salvation for all repentant, sin-stained descendants of “the first man Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45), whom the Lord God had “formed … of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). He did not come from some sort of soul-less hominid. The last Adam is “Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord, … the incarnate Deity.”7 In the slightly modified words of a famous carol, He was “born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.”7 Of course, that’s the challenge for us all, as Jesus said: “You must be born again” (John 3:7).

References and Notes

  1. An expanded treatment of several paragraphs from chapter 6 of: Bell, P., Evolution and the Christian Faith: Theistic evolution in the light of Scripture (2nd edition), Day One Publications, Leominster, UK, pp. 120–121, 2025; updated from a version in CreationExtra, CMI-UK/Europe, December 2024.
  2. Assuming that a generation is about 25 years, and a biblical date for Adam of about 6,000 years ago.
  3. Chapters 3 and 4 of Evolution and the Christian Faith (see ref. 1) provide a detailed treatment.
  4. Technically, the immediate ancestors of Homo sapiens would be termed ‘hominins’, an evolutionary grouping that includes the close relatives of H. sapiens, and our immediate supposed ancestral species.
  5. Sarfati, J., J. Creation 17(3):14–18, 2003. Also: Sanders, L., Creation 35(1):51–55, 2013; How does the Bible teach 6,000 years? creation.com/6000-years.
  6. Wieland, C., Creation 34(2):51–54, 2012.
  7. From Hark! the herald angels sing by Charles Wesley.

 

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