The “Christian” Evolutionist: Peddling Darwin to the Church

How does the theory of evolution impact Christianity? Bruce Malone, President of Search for the Truth, writes:

• “Acceptance of evolution is a poison which will destroy true Christianity. The evidence for this can be seen in the decline of the evangelical belief in Europe as the acceptance of evolution has increased.” 

Marvin Olasky, Editor in Chief, World Magazine, has also observed its impact:

• Disavowal of biblical teaching about creation is particularly serious because that perspective underlies so many other positions: In dozens of once-Christian colleges a slip-sliding-away from the first three chapters of Genesis has led to abandonment of the rest of the Bible. (World Mag. October 4, 2014, 60)

Why does this happen? The two worldviews (WV) are in direct opposition to each other. While the evolutionary WV posits a bloody fight for survival from the get-go, the Bible presents a picture of peace and harmony before the Fall. The living creatures didn’t evolve through a fight for survival. Instead, each species had been created according to its “own kind” (Genesis 1:12, 21, 25). Instead of pain and the shedding of blood, even the animals had been created as herbivores (Gen. 1:30). Humankind didn’t evolve but instead was directly created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:7). Instead, of a world where every beast was fearfully fighting for its life, God regarded His entire creation as “very good” (Gen. 1:31). In fact, it was so good, that Adam and Eve went naked, experiencing no shame and no fear of being devoured. Nor did they devour. Death wasn’t introduced until sin brought it forth (Gen. 3). In fact, there is not a verse in the entire corpus of Scripture that gives the slightest encouragement to evolution!

How does the “Christian evolutionist” (CE; They used to call themselves “theistic evolutionists” until they realized that as “Christian evolutionists,” they could better gain acceptance in the churches.) explain this blatant contradiction? Easy! Create a false and deceptive distinction! They claim that evolution is only concerned about the physical world and the Bible is only concerned about the spiritual world. Miraculously, this contradiction disappears, since the two systems are concerned about entirely different things!

This, of course, is laughable. Evolution is quite interested in also explaining the origin of morality and religion (the spiritual world), while the Bible has a lot to say about the physical world! Just one example is necessary: A theology of the Cross (spiritual world) depends on the history (what actually happened in the physical world) of the Cross. If Jesus didn’t historically die on the Cross, there can be no theology of the Cross.

There are many other examples of the same thing. Clearly, Jesus understood Genesis 1-3 as teaching something about the physical (historical) world. And what God had accomplished in the physical world was essential to the spiritual or theological world. For example, when the Pharisees challenged him about divorce, He based His answer on the physical work of God in Genesis 1 and 2:

• "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' [quoting Gen. 1:26-27] and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together [quoting Gen. 2:24], let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6) 

If Jesus regards Genesis 1-3 as historical, Christians have little choice but to also regard these accounts as historical. Meanwhile the CE claims that they are allegorical. However, no New Testament book denies their historicity. (However, this doesn’t deny that they also have a deeper allegorical meaning.)

All of the NT regard Adam as historical, without giving the slightest indication that Adam might simply be allegorical. In fact, if Adam is merely allegory, then Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must also be allegorical, since they are connected by the same genealogy.

Meanwhile, CEs even deny the historicity of Adam and the Fall. CE Karl Giberson, past co-head of Biologos Foundation, wrote:

• Acid is an appropriate metaphor for the erosion of my fundamentalism, as I slowly lost confidence in the Genesis story of creation and the scientific creationism that placed this ancient story within the framework of modern science. Dennett’s universal acid dissolved Adam and Eve; it ate through the Garden of Eden; it destroyed the historicity of the events of creation week. It etched holes in those parts of Christianity connected to the stories—the fall, “Christ as the second Adam,” the origins of sin, and nearly everything else that I counted sacred. (Saving Darwin, 9-10)

Nevertheless, he assured his readers that he is still a Christian. However, a couple of years later, he wrote negatively of the Old Testament Deity as a:

• “tyrannical anthropomorphic deity,” “commanded the Jews to go on genocidal rampages…but who believes in this deity any more, besides those same fundamentalists who think the earth is 10,000 years old? Modern theology has moved past this view of God.” 

I suspect that most CEs have also “moved past this view of God.” The CE must not only deny Genesis chapters 1-3 but also everything that the NT says about these chapters. Also, by separating the Bible from the physical world, they have dismissed apologetics, the proof of the faith. Without the physical evidence, it is hard to prove the spiritual assertions of the Bible. Here’s one example:

• The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)

Romans claims that the evidence for both God’s existence and character have been made plain, so plain that no one has an excuse. However, against the claims of Scripture, the CE claims that the physical world offers no evidence of God. CE Ron Choong, founder of the Academy for Christian Thought, claims:

• Darwin suggested that there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of God. That is correct!

Well, if Choong is right, the Bible is wrong in claiming that we are “without excuse” for not recognizing the evidence for God’s existence.

The Apostle Paul had reasoned with the Athenians in favor of the goodness of God:

• Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy." (Acts 14:17)

However, if unguided evolution is a fact, Paul’s argument about the goodness of Paul is wrong. The Athenians then should thank evolution (or chance) and not the hand of God for these “blessings!”

In fact, if the CE is correct, the entire worldview of the Bible has been undermined, as Giberson suggested. Instead, Paul claimed that Jesus is the “second Adam,” reversing the death that Adam had brought into the world:

• For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:21-22) 

If the Bible is wrong about Adam and how he introduced death into the world, what reason do we have to believe that it is right about Jesus! Jesus’ work corrects the evil done under Adam. According to the worldview of the CE, Jesus’ work, since it didn’t reverse the Fall, must have reversed the death and struggle for survival introduced by the Father’s original bloody creation design! Of course, such a notion is theologically unsupportable.

Paul also supported the Genesis account of death and the Fall in this way:

• For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21) 

Romans does not claim that creation had been created in “frustration” and “bondage to decay.” Instead, it claims that creation was “subjected to frustration” and “decay” by God’s will in agreement with the Genesis 3 account of the Fall.

However, these insurmountable problems have not stopped the CE from pushing Darwin into the church and regarding it as ignorant, as Ron Choong does:

• Darwinism exposes Christianity’s weakness in keeping up with the growing scientific knowledge. We use the fruits of scientific technology and blissfully ignore its implications for a contemporary and comprehensive worldview.

Why doesn’t the CE care about the very obvious contradictions between these oppositional worldviews? Jesus alerted us to the dangers about serving two masters:

• "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24)

The CE has made it abundantly obvious which master has won his devotion.

Letter to Atheists who Demand Proof

You ask for proof of God’s existence. I’ve answered that the proof is all around us – in the stars, the trees, the laws of nature, our bodies and feelings - available for the seeing. However, I prefer contextualized proof – the proof that arises by itself in the very midst of our conversation. Let me take an example.

You vilify Christians. I’m not talking about you specifically but about the treatment that Christians uniformly receive in the blog-Facebook world. How do we understand such behavior among people who strenuously insist that they are good without God? These are also people who boast of being tolerant and open-minded – people who pride themselves on being open to all forms of lifestyles! Why then the disconnect? The hypocrisy?

Let’s add to this another observation – the need to prove or justify ourselves, often by putting others down. Is there a simple and parsimonious way to explain these observations? Our awareness of our guilt, shame, and sense that we deserve judgment – the very things that the Bible claims we know! These are our underlying motivators – the causes of our inconsistencies – and also those things that serve to justify the biblical worldview.

We Christians serve as reminders of this reality. You project your guilt and shame on us as if we are the cause of them.  This is what happened to our Lord Jesus. He explained that He was hated because He revealed the truth to people about themselves, and He was crucified for this. Jesus warned that this would also become our fate.

But I say this, not to condemn you, but to shed some light upon your plight and the remedy we all have through our Savior who died for us, paying the price for our sins.

Are We Understanding the Bible Wrongly – Hellenistically?

A faith quarantined from life and obedience isn’t a real faith. It’s sterile, lifeless, and unbiblical (James 2:18-24). If we trust in Christ, we do what He tells us to do, albeit very imperfectly.

If we trust in our doctor, we do the things he tells us to do. Faith in Christ is similar. Brian Knowles starts with this point, but he builds upon it with wood, hay, and stubble:

• In fundamentalist Christian circles, it is often more important to believe and espouse "the right thing," than to live the right way. This is why we are so obsessed with creeds, doctrinal statements, Systematic Theologies, orthodoxy vs. heresy, and creating "Evangelical" or "Sabbatarian" or "Trinitarian" theologies. This mode of thinking is thoroughly Western, utterly Greek. 

Knowles is right to examine how our cultural influences – Greek, postmodern, or otherwise - might have skewed the way we understand Scripture. However, if he truly cares about living the “right way,” he errs by disparaging “creeds, doctrinal statements, Systematic Theologies” – our attempts to get our mind around what Scripture is teaching us. If we fail to systematically understand Scripture in a comprehensive way, we then fail to understand how to live our lives. This failure to grapple with Scripture was the very thing that Jesus criticized:

• “Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment." (John 7:23-24)

Jesus’ opponents were technically right. Healing was a form of work, and work shouldn’t be performed on the Sabbath. However, they failed to understand Scripture comprehensively (probably because their hearts were hardened).

If we are to “stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment,” we have to systematically grapple with Scripture:

   

• Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Tim. 2:15)

However, Knowles does not believe that a systematic preoccupation with the teachings of Scripture is a Hebraic Biblical thing, but the stealth corrupting influence of Greek thought:

·        In Biblical Judaism, it is precisely the opposite. Christians are inclined to subject each other to litmus tests of orthodoxy, while Jews are concerned mainly with behavior…It was gentile Christians, influenced by Greek philosophy, who both intellectualized and systematized Christian doctrine. Worse, they radically changed much of it. The Biblical Hebrews, and the Apostolic Era of the Church, had no formal theology as such. Nothing was systematized.

While Knowles is correct that the Judaism of today downplays doctrine in favor of “behavior,” “Biblical Judaism” is entirely different. In the Hebrew Scriptures, there is surpassing emphasis on what we believe/know. Hence, the Jews are often instructed to remember (know/believe) what God had done for them. Consequently, the Ten Commandments are prefaced by:

• And God spoke all these words: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Exodus 20:1-2)

Commands require a faith-rationale. Israel had to remember and believe that their God had redeemed them from Egypt. Otherwise, obedience is foundation-less.

In fact, it is apparent that entire Biblical revelation rests upon knowing God and His character:

• This is what the Lord says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

If instead, God had been a sadist and a deceiver, everything He revealed to Israel should have be discarded. Obedience requires faith; any action demands a rationale.

Besides, what evidence does Knowles present that the early Jewish church was “concerned mainly with behavior?” And what evidence does he put forth that the “gentile Christians, influenced by Greek philosophy…intellectualized and systematized Christian doctrine” in a way contrary to the thinking of the Hebrew Scriptures? None! Knowles concludes,

• If we are to understand the Bible, and what it means to be a follower of Yeshua ha Mashiach (Jesus the Messiah), then we will have to understand it Hebraically, not Hellenistically. This will require a philosophical and intellectual paradigm shift on our part. It will mean coming at Scripture from an entirely different angle. It will mean learning to think like the Hebrew who thought more like God.

Knowles is correct that the Bible must be understood “Hebraically.” However, he has failed to show that it is he who understand the Bible correctly and “Hebraically.” Perhaps instead, Knowles has been unduly influenced by his prevailing culture?