Biologos: Showing their true Gospel-Denying Colors

The Biologos Forum, dedicated to promoting evolution to the church – and they are heavily endowed to do just that - just published Part 2 of an article by Professor Joseph Bankard, denying the Christ died to atone for our sins:

• I argue that God did not will the cross. An angry crowd, a prideful group of the religious elite, and a cowardly Roman prefect, put a perfectly innocent man to death. They willed the cross. And I believe this act is an example of sin. But God is holy, loving, and just. Thus, God cannot will or condone sin…But Christ’s death was not part of God’s divine plan.

• The view sketched above does not require a historical Adam and Eve or a traditional concept of original sin… Christ’s death was not part of God’s plan. This helps preserve God’s power (God can forgive in many ways, he doesn’t require blood) and God’s goodness (God doesn’t will the cross).

As Bankard understands, this undermines the Gospel. He admits:

• The focal point of the substitutionary view is the cross of Christ. We are forgiven and saved through Jesus’ blood and sacrifice. In what follows, I will argue that emphasizing Jesus’ death is the wrong way to approach the atonement.

However, Scripture declares that Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb who takes away the sins of the world and that He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world:

• But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all… Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering. (Isaiah 53:5-10)

• He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24)

• For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)

• For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man. (Romans 8:3)

• Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." (Galatians 3:13)

• Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree." (Galatians 3:13)

• He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2)

• God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

In short, Our Lord died in our place – substitutionary atonement! This is the Gospel – that we deserve to die, but Christ has died in our place, while we were still His enemies (Rom. 5:9-10).

How can this be denied without also denying the entirety of the Gospel? It can’t! Why has Biologos published this Gospel-denying piece? Despite its many assertions that it is evangelical and regards Scripture as God’s very Word, it clearly does not! The God revealed in Scripture is not their first love.