MY LETTER TO A THEISTIC EVOLUTIONIST

You claim that, “Jesus is a central tenant of Christianity, not origins [Gen. 1-3].”

However, these are not distinct issues. To believe in Jesus is not to believe in our own concept of Jesus but to believe in what He had said and how He interpreted Scripture:

·       John 14:23-24 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”

How did Jesus regard Genesis? As an historical record of creation, what God had actually accomplished:

·       Matthew 19:4-6 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [Gen. 1:26], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? [Gen. 2:24] So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has [historically and actually] joined together, let not man separate.”

We therefore have no right to understand Genesis as non-historical and to impose our own evolutionary narrative in its place. And when we insist on doing this, we have to rearrange everything else to conform to our new worldview foundation. Consequently, the world that God had created can no longer be considered “very good.” The animals could not have been herbivores. And sin and death could not have originated in the Fall. And Jesus could not have been the “second Adam,” as Scripture teaches us.

Our interpretation of Scripture is therefore not morally neutral. We either do it faithfully or unfaithfully, honoring God with it or dishonoring Him.