The Christadelphian, December 1966

“Statement from the Watford Ecclesia”

The time has now come when we are able to make known our findings in connexion with brother Ralph Lovelock’s Notes on “The Origin of Man”. It will be recalled that the Notes arose from a series of addresses delivered to the Central London Bible Class in the autumn of 1964. None of the Watford arranging brethren attended the full series of talks; the subject matter has not been expounded in our own ecclesia, and little knowledge of it was apparent in our midst for some time. It was not until the Notes and reports on them began to gain currency throughout the country and the world that controversy began to arise. This reached such proportions, and enquiries from other ecclesias addressed to our recording brother manifested so much concern, that we were constrained to give the subject our very close consideration.

Throughout this consideration we have endeavoured to follow the following principles:

1.   We have strongly deplored the extremists in various ecclesias whose words and behaviour have been schismatic rather than Christian.

2.   We have examined the matter purely from the point of view of its scriptural implications and in relation to our common basis of faith.

3.   We have sought to reach conclusions in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ and not on the grounds of expediency or in deference to the more vociferous elements of our community, of whatever colour their views.

This has not been easy to do and we freely admit that there have been times when our own inadequacies have made us despair of accomplishing our task. Wherein we have fallen short we trust brethren and sisters will accept our assurance that it has not been due to lack of desire or of effort.

We began our examination by reading the Notes and then discussing them among ourselves. From this there emerged certain points which we took up in discussion and correspondence with brother Ralph. It took some time for us to ascertain precisely what was involved: we were new to the subject, whilst Ralph had been immersed in it for many years.

After some time we agreed that we had reached a clear understanding of our respective positions. Brother Lovelock’s views stem from his study of the subject of salvation and atonement, and from his wide reading of scientific writings concerning the origin of man and of other works on the relation of science to Scripture. We are satisfied that Ralph’s position has been conscientiously reached and is sincerely held. His reading has made him aware of a number of scientific problems and he knew that some brethren and sisters, particularly younger ones whose training and occupation brought them into contact with this field of knowledge, were troubled in trying to seek a reconciliation of science with Scripture.

We wish to make it perfectly clear that we are not closing our eyes to the problems that confront us when the theories of modern scholarship are compared with the understanding and interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis commonly accepted among us, although we would emphasize that there is by no means complete agreement among scientists themselves concerning the ideas they advance, and a so-called fact of one generation may sometimes become merely the fancy of the next.

At the same time, we are strongly of the opinion that the problems that undoubtedly exist should be frankly admitted by us as a community, for we do naught but dishonour to the word of God by pretending that these problems are not there. Our Brotherhood bears a responsibility to those in search of Scripture truth, and especially to those of tender years, to turn its attention to the solving of these difficulties in an atmosphere of calm, sincere, conscientious study, unhindered by the rumours, mistrust, suspicion and hasty judgments that have been all too prevalent among us in recent times.

Ralph had reached conclusions which were satisfactory to him and proved helpful to others who heard them. Very broadly these views are based on the following thesis:

That a race of man-like creatures existed prior to the coming of Adam. These creatures were man-like in everything except that they had no knowledge of God, and consequently no relationship with Him. Adam was formed, in a way not described, from these creatures and became representative of them. God gave Adam special qualities (powers of leadership and longevity) and a revelation. Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden to die. He made known his way of life to the surrounding man-like creatures and they thereby became men. Adam’s descendants and the man-like creatures were able to intermarry, and from these sources the world was populated (that is, through Adam’s direct descendants, through the direct descendants of the man-like creatures, and through intermarriage between the two).

Ralph has made it plain that these views are conjectural, but he is satisfied that they are the best explanation known to him of all the facts in his possession.

Obviously, this new way of looking at the origin of man involves a re-interpretation of certain parts of Scripture (for example, of Genesis, chapter 1–3; Romans, chapters 5–7; Acts, chapter 17; and 1 Corinthians, chapter 15), and a fresh look at the view generally held among us concerning the origin of all men in Adam and the origin of sin and death in him. The examination of this approach and its further implications has unremittingly engaged our attention for some considerable time. Every effort has been made to bring the two views together, but we have been forced in the end to recognize our failure to do this.

As one approach to the solution of the problem, we proposed to brother Ralph:

a.    That we would make known to the community the problems which he saw as between science and the Scriptures, and ask for the help of competent brethren in resolving them:

b.   That he should abandon the relationship he had conjectured between Adam and the man-like creatures, and thereby the application and interpretation of Scripture involved in it.

A small group of us in conjunction with Ralph spent some time examining in detail these proposals and their implications. We found no way of making them work: Ralph felt unable to abandon the conjectures, which are the best way in which his mind is satisfied at the present time. This was disappointing to the arranging brethren who felt, and still feel, that something along these lines would provide the solution best fitted to help with the scientific problems whilst preserving harmony amongst brethren. We well understood that Ralph could not be expected to say he did not believe what, in fact, he did believe; on the other hand the arranging brethren were equally unable in conscience to find Ralph’s explanations acceptable to them.

It must be understood that it has not been our intention during our discussions to wipe the whole slate, as it were, clear of problems. We conceived it to be our task to address ourselves to one particular problem, namely, to decide whether the views advanced by our brother could be reconciled with Scripture teaching concerning Man, his nature and his redemption, with especial reference to the teaching of the Apostle Paul upon these subjects. With that aim before us, we submitted to Ralph, near the end of our discussions, a proposed Joint Statement which we felt to be the only suitable basis on which we could continue to work and worship together. This Ralph was able to accept only in part. This statement follows as an appendix to the main statement.

We then proceeded to consider the next step, and this was by far the most difficult question to decide. Simply put, the courses open to us were these:

1.   To do nothing apart from reporting to our ecclesia.

2.   To do nothing apart from reporting to the ecclesia and the brotherhood.

3.   To declare that we did not accept Ralph’s views, but that we did not regard them as involving fellowship.

4.   To declare that we did not accept the views and that failing some significant modification in them we must, with the utmost reluctance and grief of heart, withdraw our fellowship from Ralph.

We could not in conscience take courses (1) and (2) because we had promised to make recommendations to the ecclesia, and because we had promised through The Christadelphian to give a clear answer to the Brotherhood on the question of whether or not we found Ralph’s Notes compatible with Scripture. We were therefore constrained to consider very seriously the third course: whether we could express disagreement with Ralph’s views but still continue in fellowship with him.

In arriving at our decision on this issue we had to determine whether the two views:

a.    were in fact two possible interpretations of Scripture;

b.   could live together among us to the benefit and edification of our body and consistently with the truth as it is in Jesus so far as we are able to understand it.

In answer to the question, “Are the two views possible alternative interpretations of Scripture?” we recognized that, in theory, it is possible to make the words of Scripture mean what Ralph’s theory requires them to mean, although in our view not without considerable strain of the verses immediately concerned, and with destructive implications for our attitude to Bible teaching in general. Ralph’s interpretation produces a basically different picture of the position of man in relation to his sinful state and the redemption offered him through the atoning work of Christ. We believe that the Genesis record and the New Testament comment upon it in Romans 5:12, “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin”, and 1 Corinthians 15:22, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”, teach our descent from one man. The genealogy of Christ in Luke 3 goes back to Adam in the same way that the Genesis record leads outward from him. Ralph cannot accept that all men have their origin in Adam, whilst we feel unable to set our belief on one side, or to say that it does not matter whether we believe it or not. This would be the implication for us were we to accept Ralph’s views.

The theory concerning the relationship between Adam and the antecedent and concurrent homo sapiens race requires that our need of redemption from sin is irrespective of our descent from Adam, an idea which is irreconcilable with our understanding of Scripture.

Ralph’s reply to these objections is that our ideas are limited to a “nineteenth century theology”. Maybe so, but the question must surely be asked, should we be expected to jettison the clearly expressed teaching of Paul, which lies at the very basis of our faith, merely in order to accommodate the ideas put forward concerning the race of man-like beasts or beast-like men about whom Scripture is absolutely silent?

The arranging brethren were unanimous in their agreement that they could not accept this position; and this decision largely controlled their answer to the second question that they have had to ask themselves: “Could the two views live together among us to the edification and well-being of the community?”

In coming to a decision upon this question we have looked first at the effect of Ralph’s views upon ourselves, and then at their likely effect upon our brethren and sisters. We must record that the months in which we have applied ourselves to the consideration of Ralph’s Notes have been spiritually barren for all of us, and we would not wish others to be forced through the same experiences. One or two of us who have followed out the consideration of Ralph’s views with deep personal involvement have experienced all the threats of agnosticism and destruction of faith which have made us certain that the two views cannot exist side by side in our own minds. In particular we have felt that to accept the kind of approach to Scriptural interpretation that is involved in Ralph’s exposition would be to leave ourselves at the mercy of any other passing wind of doctrine that drew its sanction from a theoretically possible but otherwise unnatural meaning imposed upon a passage of Scripture.

We could not, therefore, accept the suggestion that both Ralph’s views and the views of our community might be able to live together without destroying the distinctive character of the latter. We are satisfied that the end of such a course would be the end of us as a community, because nothing could prevent a drift to the churches around us, or, for some, a drift to agnosticism. We could, therefore, only recommend to the ecclesia that brother Lovelock’s views, as outlined above, be rejected as contrary to our common faith and understanding, and as ultimately destructive of the well-being of the Brotherhood in true faith and fellowship.

Having reached this decision we were led to contemplate the fourth course of action referred to above, namely to recommend to the ecclesia that, failing some significant modification in Ralph’s views, we reluctantly and sorrowfully withdraw our fellowship from him. We shrank from this consideration because the spirit of our communion together and our very real personal links with Ralph were deeply involved. We were aware, however, that over recent months, from one cause and another, our fellowship with Ralph had suffered considerable interruption and strain. Clearly this situation could not continue without producing a serious decline in our spiritual growth and common bonds. In our desperate anxiety to repair the breach we have even considered that Ralph might be asked to remain amongst us but not to be an active member in public duties. This, however, was an untenable solution: it denied to Ralph the freedom to express what he believed to be true, and for us it nullified the principles stated in the Appendix. To our great grief, we were forced to face the fact that brother Lovelock’s approach to, and understanding of Scripture on these important subjects were not in accord with those commonly and traditionally held amongst us.

We think that a careful reading of this report will suggest that throughout our discussions, every opportunity has been offered to Ralph to retract from the position originally occupied by him at the time of the publication of his Notes. But only those few brethren who have, during the past twelve months, devoted many hours each week to the solving of this problem can have any conception of the continual heart-searching efforts that have been exerted in the hope that some satisfactory outcome might emerge. Time after time we appealed to Ralph to modify his views, and in a final effort to break the deadlock, we put to him the question, “Is your conjectural understanding of the origin of man a worthwhile exchange for the unhappiness apparent in your immediate brethren and the strain produced in your fellowship with them?” Ralph’s reply was that the fault lay in our inability to receive new and improved ideas.

We could not therefore see any way in which this unsatisfactory and fruitless position could be resolved except it be by our going our separate ways before God, deeply as such a conclusion moved and distressed us.

After earnest prayer and much heart-searching, the arranging brethren were therefore driven reluctantly but unanimously to recommend that our ecclesia withdraw fellowship from brother Ralph Lovelock.

Your brethren by grace in the bonds of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,

Maurice Clark

Cyril Cooper

David Dean

George Driver

Peter Egerton

Walter Johnson

Neville Smart

Harry Tennant

Appendix

Statement for Joint Agreement by All Arranging Brethren

1.  We believe that Adam was the physical progenitor of the whole race with whom God’s redemptive purpose is concerned.

2.  Whilst we do not claim to know in literal detail either the time taken or the methods used by God in creating Adam, we believe that Adam came into being as the purposed result of God’s creative activity, and that he was distinct in kind from the animal world, the fishes, the birds, and the beasts of the field, this distinctiveness of kind being indicated by the scriptural record that “God created man in His own image”. We understand this to involve that man, unlike the animals, was endowed with moral and intellectual faculties enabling him to receive and respond to divine revelation.

3.  We believe that, possessed of this moral and intellectual capacity, in the beginning Adam was placed in Eden under a law, disobedience to which would bring death into his experience; that he disobeyed this law and was in consequence condemned to die; and that he was expelled from the Garden of Eden, henceforth to experience sorrow, hardship and pain.

4.  We believe that the disastrous consequences of Adam’s transgression were not restricted to himself, but affected all his descendants, so that:

a.    the death which Adam came to know became the natural lot of all his descendants;

b.   We inherit from Adam our own predisposition to sin—a predisposition which is transmitted to us from Adam the sinner as a “law” bound to our physical bodies from which, with Paul, we cry for deliverance; and

c.    We die, therefore, because we inherit Adam’s sin-stricken and dying nature, and we confirm death as our proper individual due by each yielding to the sinful impulses transmitted from Adam to all his descendants.

5.  We believe that we can be delivered from this situation and reconciled to God only through the saving activity of God Himself through His son Jesus Christ; and that Jesus opened the way to this deliverance:

a.    by sharing the nature which we all inherit from Adam (including its predisposition to sin and its mortality);

b.   by resisting unto death the power of sin in that nature; and

c.    by offering his body upon the Cross once for all as a propitiation for the sins of all men.

6.  After the fullest consideration, we find ourselves unable to reconcile with these beliefs a theory which involves that Adam and his descendants preached the revealed God to a race of man-like creatures who were not men, but became men on contact with the revelation, were able to inter-marry with Adam’s descendants, and together with Adam’s descendants, became the forerunners of the human race as we know it. We have to reject this theory because:

a.    it presents a fundamentally different view of man, and of the human situation before God, from that outlined in paragraphs (1) to (5) above; and

b.   it is not taught in Scripture and can only be accommodated to Scripture teaching by interpretations likely to undermine foundation truths of our faith.