Re: [asa] Discovery Institute against harmonizing?

I will put in my twopenny worth (reflects my sitz im leben). I became a Christian through the Christian Union at Univ in 68 and was thus presented with a classical evangelical theology. Evolution was not mentioned and no one was concerned that I was graduating at the same time in geology. There were 14 geologists in my year and with me it made three whom were Christians. It was only a few years later I heard about YEC and frankly laughed and then cried when I read them.

I simply slotted into the 100 year tradition in Britain of accepting evolution and an orthodox biblical theology, though at that time I was unaware of what people previously held. This was the view of Stott Packer and everyone else I can think of.

As time went by I undertook a long and continuing historical study and found that in the UK scene most evangelicals accepted evolution soon after Darwin and geology by 1820. I wont give details now. This was paralled in the USA until about 1900

Absolutely crucial is that when geology time was accepted (1780s) and thus death before humans most considered this to have no impact on the doctrine of the atonement, as animal death is irrelevant to the Fall. This goes against a major plank of YEC arguments on this. I find virtually no concern about this from 1770 to 1820 when some Christens started worrying about this, but the majority of evangelicals saw no problem.

In fact the "problem" of death before the Fall comes out of geological time and the fact of extinction before humanity rather than evolution.

The main issue raised by evolution in 1860 was whether or not humans descended from other animals and a good number of Christians (who were OEC) felt this could not be as it would take away the moral status of humans. Hence there was a reluctance to accept evolution from goo to you, yet many accepted evolution from goo to the chimp followed by a direct act of creation for us.

So in fact evolution does not call for a radical rewrite of theology. Along with geology it makes a 6 day creation impossible - but then that was never the majority or official view despite what many claim..

The problem comes when some insist that orthodoxy involves;

Total inerrancy ( a 20th century innovation wrongly extending the arguments of Hodge and Warfield)

No death before the Fall ( not a problem before 1820, and then only for a few until the 20th century)

Special creation of humans (not stated in scripture)

A dogmatic literal interpretation of Genesis (not held by many before 1800) ( there is a big difference between a dogmatic literalism and a literalism which accepts that the earth is young because there is no evidence available that it is old)

To conclude if anything scientific caused the problem it was geology way back in the 1780s and not anything put forward by Darwin 80 years later.

Michael
----- Original Message -----
  From: SteamDoc@aol.com
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 7:04 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Discovery Institute against harmonizing?

  John Walley (staring by quoting David Campbell) writes:
> As advocated within the ASA, TE/EC typically asserts that evolution has
> little philosophical or theological significance and so is already
> explicitly in disagreement with those who claim that we need to radically
> modify our theological or philosophical views in light of evolution.

    David,

    I find the above curious and revealing about the church community you belong
    too. A friend of mine also from AL just recently spoke this week at our RTB
    Christmas party here and referred to presentation as his "TE Coming Out
    Party". I mentioned this earlier when I submitted the "7 Words You Can't Say
    in Church".

    My experience has been quite the opposite of your statement above. I for one
    have been saying all week that the church needs a radically new theology in
    order to process TE. Ever since the party I have been in email and in-person
    debates with members who are struggling with theological implications of TE.
    I have received numerous questions like the historical Adam, original sin,
    common descent, inerrancy, ad nauseam, simply because this concept is so
    foreign to them theologically. In fact, my observation is that it is the
    theological filter than prevents them from receiving the scientific evidence
    of TE when you present it to them.
    <SNIP additional description of obstacles>

  ----------------------------
  Allan replies:
  In fairness to David, he was talking about what is typically asserted by most who affirm a Theistic Evolution (Evolving Creation) perspective, not claiming that such assertions are generally met with agreement in the church.

  In looking at the degree to which acceptance of evolution (in case a certain person is reading, I am only talking about *biological evolution* here) requires theological and/or doctrinal rethinking for evangelical Christians, I think we can (with inevitable oversimplification) divide things into two groups.

  The first group is those with a fundamentalist approach to Scripture (such as the Chicago statement and other hardline versions of the "inerrancy" doctrine), who insist that any Scripture that seems to touch on science must be scientifically perfect, who do not allow Scripture to use figurative language and the vehicle of story to communicate truth, who do not allow God to accommodate his revelation to the limitations and conceptual framework of the original audience. For this group, reconciling with evolution is pretty much impossible. Even an Old Earth is difficult for this group, since to fit it into their approach to Scripture tends to require major interpretational contortions. Of course such an approach has many more problems than just its interaction with evolution (including the way it can border on idolatry) -- and I think there is really no hope for constructive progress here (not just for science/faith issues but for the overall health of the church) unless people can be convinced to stop trying to make God's Word conform to human-invented standards of "perfection" arising from modern Western rationalism, standards that would have been foreign to the Biblical writers themselves.

  The second group is those with a more "moderate" approach to Scripture, who still affirm the Bible as trustworthy but who allow God to accommodate his revelation, communicate truth with story and figurative language, etc. In my opinion, with a more moderate view of Scripture, the conflict between biological evolution and theology/doctrine is reduced to *almost* zero, especially if one recognizes that God is sovereign over nature so that natural explanations like evolution are not in conflict with affirming that "God did it." Many Christians in this group may well *think* that evolution creates significant conflict, but usually this is just a knee-jerk reaction because they have been conditioned to think of evolution as inimical to faith, not due to any actual theological conflict that can be articulated.

  I said the conflict was reduced to *almost* zero above, because I think there is still one legitimate area of tension, namely issues surrounding Adam, sin, and the Fall. That is one area where a TE/EC position may require some rethinking of theology and doctrine. Even there, one has at least two options that, while not common in conservative tradition, are within the bounds of orthodoxy:
  1) A representative Adam as "federal" head of the human race.
  2) Viewing Genesis 3 (which clearly has *some* figurative elements like the talking snake and God walking in the garden) as entirely figurative, conveying in story form the truth about how all humans follow our own selfish ways rather than following God.
  Many Evangelicals find #2 unacceptable -- if they base that on Paul's mentions of Adam I think that is a very weak argument (if I say "we should love our neighbors like the Good Samaritan did" does that mean I am claiming the Good Samaritan was a real individual?), but if it is based on a more systematic view of fall and atonement and redemption and their relationship then I at least respect the argument.

  So, in summary, I think Christian acceptance of biological evolution (as science, of course we must reject the philosophical baggage that people like Dawkins and Johnson attach to it) often only requires minor theological adjustment. It only requires "radically new theology" if one's existing theology is centered around a book that must be "perfect" by the human-invented criteria of modernism.

  Allan (ASA Member)
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
  Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
  "Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
  attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cat"

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Received on Sat Dec 15 15:42:59 2007