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young pastors: anti-science views exact a heavy toll
Headline: “In the Latest Religious Battle, A Call to Arms for Mother Theresa.” Some Christians wanted the Empire State building to honor Mother Theresa’s 100th birthday by displaying white and blue lights on the building. The building managers said, “We don’t do that for religious figures.” The Catholic Anti-Defamation League called for a public protest. And this honored Mother Theresa? Shall we get a grip? It’s time to move beyond the communal instinct to “defend the faith” against the “attacks” of outsiders, and humbly consider what we’re doing to besmirch the gospel. What are we doing to place a millstone ’round the neck of those who might otherwise find their way to faith?
Don’t get me wrong. I love the church. I’ve devoted most of my life to the church. I believe in the church. Jesus is with the church for better or worse–he’s committed to working through flesh and blood.
The church in the United States does a great deal of good, much of it unsung. The global relief efforts supported by church based missions around the world are STAGGERING in their scope. The hungry would be hungrier without churches. The fragile fabric of community in this ever man for himself culture would be torn asunder without churches being churches.
But we’ve managed to shoot ourselves in our gospel-clad feet. Consider this: the largest Christian institution is wracked by a paedophilia scandal that will be with us for our lifetime. The most vibrant religious movement in the United States–evangelicalism–has squandered it’s inheritance in exchange for what? To become a hard-ball political force deeply entwined with with one political-cultural alliance, branding the Jesus faith as pro-war, anti-gay, pro-Israel whether justice is served or not, anti-environment, anti-science. The book by the Barna Group, UnChristian, provides the gruesome details.
I’ve been a believer since 1971, and it didn’t use to be this way. The barriers in the path of those who are in need of some good news are massive. If we are in denial over these things, it’s completely understandable.
Christians have always been, will always be, misunderstood. We claim to follow a guy who who rose from the dead. This will invite skepticism. But that does not account for the state of things today.
I really do, believe it or not, hesitate to speak like this. But in this post, as in the previous two, I’m writing for fellow pastors. We cannot afford to candy coat what it is we’re up against. And the responsibility we have to do our small part to change it.
We have a responsibility to understand how outsiders read us. And the impact their reading has. Because people don’t read the Bible until they’ve read the readers of the Bible and find in them a story they want to explore further.
Let us take the matter of science that’s been the concern of the previous two posts.
Let’s say you are a non-religious person who is open to believing. You’ve have never encountered a compelling reason to believe; you’ve never been close to a compelling witness. But you have a new friend who is also a believer. Reads the Bible daily. Gives generously–ten percent of income to the church and more than that for other neighbors in need. Gives way more than you do to causes you believe in.
But then, your friend starts spouting opinions that you can’t help but regard as crackpot opinions. I don’t know, say he thinks the moon landing was a hoax, or believes aliens have been abducting people on a regular basis, or is convinced the President of the United States is a Muslim.
Mind you, I’m not arguing that the moon landing wasn’t a hoax or that aliens haven’t been abducting people for a long time. I’m just trying to help you appreciate how jarring it would be, when someone you would otherwise respect, turns out to hold, for lack of a better word, crackpot views. It makes you wonder if this new friend is someone you want to listen to when it comes to discerning what is real and what is not.
That’s how many normal, moderate, considerate people view those who think science has it all wrong–that the earth is really 10,000 years old, rather than 4,500,000,000 years old, say, or that evolution is a theory in crisis, or that climate science is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to lead us down the primrose path of socialism.
Please, if you hold any of these views, I am not calling you a crackpot. I know many very intelligent and thoughtful people who have the aforementioned opinions. I don’t think of them as crackpots. But I have the insider information needed to see them differently than others do.
But, pastor, can you place yourself in the position of someone who might perceive these as crackpot opinions? Opinions that would affect your willingness to trust a person’s ability to bear reliable witness to something you don’t yet see?
I’m using the inflammatory word, “crackpot” so you can appreciate the feelings many people have when, from the outside, they look into the Christian culture.
But you, as a pastor, have a responsibility to face this reality squarely–this missional reality, that is–and decide what to do about it. Is it OK with you that millions of people are reluctant to accept the witness of the church because in their view Christians hold very strange opinions about scientific matters? As a pastor, do you challenge this reality and seek to change it? Or do you play along? Oh, well. This is the way it is. If it makes people stay away from God, so be it.
The church is the authenticating structure of the gospel, as N.T. Wright says. People who don’t know whether the gospel is reliable or not, look to the people who organize their lives around the gospel to see how it impacts the community they form around the gospel. Does the community formed by the gospel taste, feel, seem, like good news?
What is the message of your church culture to the people on the outside of faith looking in, kicking its tires, so to speak?
When people who care deeply about science or who identify culturally with science whether or not they are personally interested in it come to your church, do they go away saying, “These are reliable witnesses, they might be on to something.” Or do they go away thinking, “Those are some nice people but, but gosh, they have some strange opinions when it comes to science!”
A long, long time ago, a North African Bishop named Augustine, one of the great lights of the later Reformers, said this about the way some believers of his time were reading the first chapter of the book of Genesis:
“It often happens that even a non-Christian knows a thing or two about the earth, the sky, the various elements of the world, about the movement and revolution of the stars and even their size and distance, about the nature of animals, shrubs, rocks, and the like, and maintains this knowledge with sure reason and experience. It is offensive and ruinous, something to be avoided at all cost, for a nonbeliever to hear a Christian talking about these things as though with Christian writings as his source, and yet so nonsensically and with such obvious error that the nonbeliever can hardly keep from laughing.
The trouble is not so much that the erring fellow is laughed at but that our authors are believed by outsiders to have held those same opinions and so are despised and rejected as untutored men, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil…How are they going to believe our books concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven when they think they are filled with fallacious writing about things which they know from experience or sure calculation?
There is no telling how much harm these rash and presumptuous people bring upon their more prudent brethren when they begin to be caught and argued down by those who are not bound by the authority of our Scriptures, and when they then try to defend their flippant, rash, and obviously erroneously statements by quoting a shower of words from those same Sacred Scriptures, even citing from memory those passages which they think support their case, ‘without understanding either what they are saying or things about which they make assertions’ (I Tim. 1:7)” – St. Augustine in The Literal Meaning of Genesis [By "literal" Augustine means something more like, "literary".]
I know this series of posts on evolution seems like much ado about nothing. A side issue. But there’s more than science at stake. The gospel is at stake as well. That’s the only reason Billy Graham weighed in on evolution, knowing full well he was wading into the swamp on this one. But Billy Graham was dead on.
Augustine was dead on too. And we’ve got to face the tough truth he spoke so long ago, again today, together.
Young pastor, help make a church that would make Augustine proud. Even it means stirring the pot a little. Billy Graham has done the heavy lifting for you. The Bible is not a book of science. God could easily work through an evolutionary process his wonders to perform. You love your Bible? Billy loves his Bible too.
And there are many others who would read the thing, if we just got out of their way.
Tags: augustine, Barna Group, billy graham, climate change, evolution, UnCristian
August 30th, 2010 at 9:13 am
The problem with the reconciliation of evolution and Biblical Christianity is the frequent lack of definition of evolution. Is it changes within a species to adapt to environmental changes? Most Christians won’t beef with that.
If, however, you’re talking about Adam and Eve not being created explicitly by God and instead forming over many years, then I think there are huge implications related to the authority of Scripture. Witness the recent back and forth between Karl Gilberson of Biologos and Al Mohler of Southern Seminary. Gilberson’s willingness to throw out a historical Adam and Eve in the name of consistency with evolutionary science relegates numerous Scriptural passages (not just in Genesis but in Romans, Luke, and Jude) to fables. It also reduces the problem of our sin nature to something that naturally came about and makes it into a puzzle that we can naturally “solve”.
As someone who grew up in Ann Arbor and is looking to start a new church community here, I recognize the challenges that can arise as people try to reconcile science and the Bible. The Bible is not a science textbook, but it must be our supreme authority on ALL things because it is God’s unique revealed Word. It is only through God’s Word that we can see and know Christ and if we really believe that God became fully man, lived a sinless life, and came to life again after dying a horrific death, then we must acknowledge God’s ability to create the world in the way expressed in His Word, no matter how improbable that may sound to us.
August 30th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Ken I agree with your point that we as believers in the current US culture have done damage to the Gospel by adding barriers that should not be there for many who might have otherwise explored further what it means to follow Jesus.
Where I am a bit unclear about are other ‘crackpot’ ideas that I see as being clearly part of a ture path to Jesus such as the resurrection, miracles, the reality of a spiritual realm as well as many of the things Jesus mentioned in the beatitudes.
The very mention of a belief in someone being born of a virgin, claiming godhood, being killed and returning to life would be considered ‘crackpot’ by some of my peers.
I have gotten angry reactions to the idea of turning the other cheek when wronged. An idea that has clearly been seen by many as foolish or cowardly.
A belief in miraculous healing also has many laughing at believers.
So is there a balance in the idea of being God’s fool? I know there must be because I have myself felt that fellow believers have been unnecessarily foolish for Christ by claiming that evolution is from the devil, yet at times have been afraid of being labeled a fool for wanting to claim that I do believe that Jesus could indeed control the weather and walk through walls.
August 30th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Ken, you know I’m with you 100% on this… But what happens when we get to something like, say, the resurrection of Jesus–and potential believers say, on the basis of their scientific understanding of the way life and death work, “Well that’s sure a crackpot idea!”? How do we differentiate our missional response to issues of origins vs. issues of redemptive-historical events? I know many a Christian who would say that it ALL sounds crazy in light of science, but it’s the Biblical truth and we should conform to it…
September 2nd, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Thank you Ken. I wonder if, regardless of ‘issues’, the church was much less interested in power, influence and the moral power of being ‘right,’ and instead much more humble, poured out, servant-hearted – ie doing the Gospel instead of spouting on about it, whether more people would be able to understand our message that God is love and they are the object of his love and affirmation, regardless of any views about creation vs evolution?
I think that’s what Mother Teresa modelled and most folks seemed to get her message pretty clearly – oddly any lighting up of landmarks or protesting about that so misses the point of who she was!
September 4th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Tim, This is one of my main points, but poorly stated in the post, perhaps. Christianity is faith in transcendent realities, many of which are not verifiable by scientific method (resurrection of Jesus being the central one.) So when Christians hold opinions about science that are viewed as outlandish, crackpot, etc. we lose all credibility with people who value science. Why should they listen to us on matters that can’t be verified scientifically when we are so mistaken about matters that can be verified scientifically? This is especially problematic when we insist that our mistaken views of science are an integral part of our faith. Science itself, at least in theory, is willing to recognize that there are many realities that cannot be verified by the limited method and tools of science.
September 4th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Kim, Amen!
September 5th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Ken, there has been some great discussion of these issues in the press here in the Uk in the last few days after the publication of Stephen Hawking’s new book. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi addressed it well by saying science and religion are not in opposition but addressing complementary questions of ‘how’ ‘what’ and ‘why’.
September 5th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
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Tim (@ August 30th, 2010 at 5:13 pm),
I’m not happy with my answers. I wrestle with your questions. Lifelong.
Tons of miracle-stuff is potentially falsifiable by objective scientific observers (too technical to get into here).
But, an undying problem remains that even when Jesus asked the Father to glorify Himself, even then, different witnesses heard vastly different things and different messages in the miraculous Thunder (John 12:27ff).
The problem is not a problem with certifying objective thunderous events nor with certifying their objective observers in a scientific sense. The problem is when observers transit different meanings.
What’s built into the nature of a miracle, or built into the nature of observers, or in the nature of Nature’s God, or what’s built into the combinatorics of all of these taken together – which makes miracles convey clear meanings to some and confused meanings to others? – what is it about the miraculous in which the net result is non-consensus among observers? Should those who did not really hear the message of the Thunder be expected to “conform” (your word) to its message? Who are the liars among those who heard only thunder, but who said they heard a message?
For example, there’s a counter-intuitive humility in science in how miraculous healings today get characterized by medical science as un-coded anomalies (no ICD code) or as spontaneous remissions – and very rightly so because natural sciences including medicine and the other natural sciences deliberately limit their scope to the counter-intuitive humility of finding natural causes for natural events.
The supernatural isn’t on the science radar screen. Nor is the supernatural supposed to be – including the supernatural not registering on the fancy and hifalutin Zurich IBM atomic force microscope, nor on your humble local hospital heart monitor. The NAS has made this clear: that science seeks to understand natural causes for natural events. This form of counter-intuitive humility has been made clear by the sciences. Repeatedly.
Again, who would be the liars among those who heard only thunder, but who said they heard a message?
Think of your non-believing friends when you ask this question. Think of your science friends.
The consequences of this science humility are equally counter-intuitive. The church needs more – not less – genuine science education.
God, help us.
The problem I have personally (your results may vary) is that I agree with your words about – “we should conform to it” (say the Resurrection) – is this problem –> that I don’t believe that conforming to Resurrection Life means conforming to evangelical bias, conforming to ignorance, or conforming to lies about the sciences when the sciences tell us truths about our natural world.
And I see no virtue in making liars out of people who hear only thunder by insisting that they hear the same message I hear in Thunder.
Conforming to the truth about Resurrection Life means conforming to truth in all its disciplines and forms.
One part of the heavy toll exacted by anti-science sentiment is not so much the toll on missional stuff, but rather, it’s the toll even privately and internally – the toll on our internal integrity, the toll on whether we’re – whether I’m – facing all kinds of truth, including truth revealed by the sciences.
It’s a truth issue. And a truth toll.
To wit – if we take scripture interpretation like a Pascal’s wager – wagering interpreting scripture as an insurance policy to hedge our calculated bets against science – then we’ve already lost. Our integrity.
Again, I’m not happy with my answers. And the truth – the truth is that I’m ignorant of much of the science-Resurrection interface.
But I just can’t believe that Resurrection Life calls me to lie about truth which science reveals. Nor to make liars out of those who hear only thunder.
Cheers,
Jim
September 11th, 2010 at 7:44 am
With this heading I have to agree – as a high school science teacher I have been and continue to be treated like the antichrist by fundamentalists, especially young-earth creationists. As I replied to a neighbor who invited me to a church that strictly adheres to this doctrine: “Why on earth would I want to…”
And I can’t agree more with your feeling that more people might read the Bible if Xians got out of the way. I will never forget the first time I went to a Christian church as a teenager – I was having a lot of trouble with my father and had run away from home when I was invited to a service by my friend with whom I was staying. Being the ‘new kid’ in the group I was asked if I believed in evolution by the pastor (seems that had been the topic). I do not remember any details from the verbal assault I endured after I responded with a ‘well… yeah…” other than his raised voice and my desire to get the heck out of there and never return. Years later after I met Jesus I was enraged that this pastor never thought to introduce me to Him – I was so ready at that time, and it could have saved me from a lot of bad choices that came after.
With that being said I still cannot leave this issue alone, because I feel very strongly that there is no way to reconcile creation with evolution. I also have read Darwin’s book; especially revealing to me is his statement of purpose in his introduction, specifically to introduce an alternative to creation. Echoing the thoughts of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, Charles synthesized his theory in an attempt to take credit for creation away from any deity. That by itself bothers me – doesn’t that bother you?
Maybe I am incredibly biased against evolution – I have a handicapped daughter and my teaching career has always involved disadvantaged minority students that do not separate beliefs/ideas/concepts of the abstract realm from real life (although I perceive this as more biblical than a western dualism that allows me to believe one thing and behave in a way that shows no congruence). We had a student murdered by other students last week. From an evolutionary point of view, that is really not a big deal; he was a genetic experiment to see if his code would survive. To any other than his family and friends, it is not a big deal; that is life in the ‘hood.’ If you believe in creation, an image of the Almighty God was destroyed in a crime that offended the God of Heaven and Earth more than it did our justice system.
I do not see how I can persuade students that they matter; they have more intrinsic value than the sum of their chemical content and their unique dna if I tell them they were not created by a loving God, but by a series of random mutations and environmental pressures over time. All of the most powerful verses about a personal God and His purposes mean nothing if I can’t give Him credit for creation. Maybe if I had a highbrow church I could try to convince people that it was God working through these processes that by definition do not involve Him. It doesn’t work down here. I am often asked by my students if I believe in evolution or creation. I think with their limited understanding they are seeing the dichotomy clearly.
If life evolved on earth, given the size of the universe (and using Drake’s equation), there is no reason to assume there is not or has not been or will not be life on other planets – if it ‘happened’ here, it could happen anywhere conditions are suitable. I don’t know why this makes me feel not very special in the grand scheme of things, and this is typical of rhetoric when watching videos dealing with cosmology, especially made a decade or two ago (some of Carl Sagan’s comments come to mind).
No reason to believe intelligent life can’t/won’t/hasn’t evolve/evolved elsewhere. Is Jesus going to reincarnate Himself to save them, or maybe they won’t eat the fruit? While the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about intelligent life elsewhere, the possibility reduces our Gospel to a fairy tale. Think about it.
What resonates with the Bible (Gen 1:1) is the Expanding Universe Model (aka the Big Bang) which shows the universe has a birthday that really can’t be explained (unless you accept the colliding branes, which is pure conjecture at this point…) The appearance of fine tuning (Intelligent Design is not a religious argument… it is a growing paradigm among cosmologists despite attempts to hijack it), especially the evidence to show that all of the matter in the universe (WOW) was required just to make life possible on this one planet. (Now I feel very special, and humbled, as David says, “Who is man…”) Creation makes you feel significant; evolution reduces you to an experimental set of alleles.
The Bible teaches creation. While Gen 1-3 is not a science text, it teaches that God creates. He creates and organizes. It is not any other perceived deity of the day. He does it. He should get the credit. Just because we have different deities than the ancient peoples Moses was teaching doesn’t mean we can give them credit for what God has made.
September 11th, 2010 at 8:47 am
John, This is a wonderful post from you. Thank you. I think the questions you raise about evolution are entirely valid, and the ones to be raising. I’ve pondered long and hard on similar themes. Have a wedding and church to prep for but I’ll get back to you on this one. But I just had to say thanks for starters.
September 12th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
John, Thoughtful post! And to all those who can’t get past the dichotomous thinking that either God made us and we are special and evolution is false OR evolution is true and life has no grand meaning and God is false—by all means believe in God and not evolution!!! If those are truly the only coherent choices—which is not how I see it—then I believe God. However, it seems to me we believers believe in scientific explanations and “God explanations” all the time. Different ways of explanation tell different parts of the truth. I might tell young children that God made them or that Mommy and Daddy loved each other, wanted a baby and that their special kind of love made a baby grow inside of Mommy. That is true—and the plant-it-deep-in-your heart-and-build-your-life-upon-it kind of true. But it is not a scientific explanation. It is also true that a random sperm made it to an egg and…well you know the science! We can believe the scientific explanation and still believe God has a purpose for our lives, has good works prepared in advance for us to do. Science doesn’t have the whole truth.
I believe in a God whose intention rules and creates, who spoke and it came to be, who works in and through all things. Even a powerful earthly king could rule/intend that palaces be built and what the king intended could then happen without any physical involvement by the king at all. It would be true that the king created the palace and it belonged to the king. It would also be true that the palace was a result of workers, and chemical and mechanical processes over time.
None of this addresses the specific issue of whether or to what extent the theory of evolution is true. I’m just making a couple of analogies to show how, for me anyway, believing that God is behind natural processes, can intervene in/work outside of natural processes, and can work through natural processes is all an everyday part of my faith.
September 13th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
John, you bring up excellent questions for which I have no answers.
I have heard the argument that the teaching of evolution can foster the kind of morals that you see at work in the murdering of the student you mention. I have seen arguments that blame evolution as providing encouragement for the Nazi belief of one ‘master race’ (which I think started around the time of Darwin) as the peak of evolution in humans and thus providing ‘Arians’ with the right to oppress and eliminate ‘weaker’ or less ‘evolved’ races just like natural selection does for the animal kingdom.
On the other hand though, must it follow that just because natural selection rules in the animal kindgom, must apply to men, made in the image of God? Could it be humans are to play by different rules?
Could it be that evolution was used by God to develop living beings from simple single celled organisms, culminating in a being that has the capacity to relate to God and as such also could make decisions that ran counter the natural selection ‘rules’?
I mean turning the other cheek and blessing those who curse you are clearly not in the best interests of survival in the animal world, yet are requirements for ’survival’ in God’s kingdom.
September 14th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
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John said, “… I do not see how I can persuade students that they matter; they have more intrinsic value than the sum of their chemical content and their unique dna if I tell them they were not created by a loving God, but by a series of random mutations and environmental pressures over time. All of the most powerful verses about a personal God and His purposes mean nothing if I can’t give Him credit for creation.”
Discount Darwin for his explicit anti-theological sentiments (I think this is a mistake since Darwin rejected a specific and not broad spectrum theology – but, I’ll play along), and we still must face the same facts as Darwin faced in the natural world. Take the facts of superfecundity which any of your students might observe for themselves without Darwin.
How to explain to students the loving reasons why a loving God who creates “intrinsic value” should get credit for the creation of far more numerous offspring than can survive (which goes to whole living organisms, and not just to the random sperm example which Barb mentioned)?
Doesn’t a theology of a highly ordered universe with all properties and processes determined by God raise as many or more paradoxes for thinking students as an explanation in which both chance and necessity combine across all scales (crystal formation, protein folding, embryonic development, radioactive decay)?
And what to tell students who go into the sciences? What to tell students who can see for themselves the processes of statistical mechanics across all scales (see scales above) so that through the large number of chances, chance does become constructive?
And more problematically, what to tell modestly trained science students who see from both their own private devotional prayers and God’s answers to these prayers, as well as in the scales of nature, a model at work which involves as much chanciness in answers to prayer as the chanciness in the filagree of crystal formations and protein folding – the whole order hailing to partial differential equations with diffusion properties everywhere?
I love your comment about the Drake equation on the same order as Francis Collins saying that agnosticism is a valid intellectual response to the cosmos (I agree with this) so long as the agnostic is willing to make peace with a multiverse beyond observation – so what Qualifier is to say that agnostic peace is less satisfying than my Christian peace in believing in charismatic events galore?
But, isn’t the remaining problem in teaching students the problem of what to make of student observations right before them all around, and the fact that most students see statistical mechanics (stochastic, random, chance interactions) all across the natural world and all across its scales (crystal formation, protein folding, embryonic development, radioactive decay), even if younger students (say junior high students) lack the science vocabulary to express the ubiquitous randomness they already see? – and what to teach students about the extremely dicey and random chances for good and evil which students see in mere human relationships?
At just what point (at what scale in nature, at what point in human relationships, at what point in the stochastic nature of answers to our prayers) are you willing to say that chance becomes the natural opportunity to advance the “intrinsic value” of God’s creative work?
And why – if large number theory is so egregious to us in the natural sciences – do many faith healers besides John Wimber agree with what John said about our prayers for faith healing, that is, to pray for a hundred people before expecting to see a single healing? Is this concept really unaccessible to junior high students? And who are we really fooling when we plaster over words like “chance” with too neatly ordered theological meanings?
Cheers,
Jim
September 15th, 2010 at 8:15 am
John, finally getting back to your comment. Wish I had more time. Let me just add something to Barb’s response, with which I concur. It’s to do with the form of creationism that Darwin knew and rejected. IN his time, it was a very particular view of creation and a very particular reading of Genesis. The conventional reading of his time (and Darwin was never more than a conventional believer of his time) was that Genesis WAS science (contra Billy Graham). Buch of English Christianity had placed all their eggs in this basket. So that meant God made the world in six literal days, about 10,000 years ago. The whole of C & E, academic and otherwise accepted this. And, reading it as though it were a scientific telling of creation, also read it as though God separately brought into existence by a special and discrete act of creation (not a mediated through means creation) each of the distinct species. Everything was thought to have been “designed” in the sense that we think of design: like engineer has design plans from the architect from which he makes the thing. The emphasis in natural history (pre-biology) was to point out how marvelously and ingeniously everything was designed in this sense.
Darwin looked carefully at nature and said, it couldn’t have happened like that. He rejected design in that sense and Genesis as a scientific telling of creation, because that was his only alternative, and being a conventional Christian, he didn’t seek to read the text differently. No one else did in his world, i think.
So like the Baptist missionary’s son who considers no alternative, when faced with the evidence of nature itself, he chose nature’s story over this other one.
But what it there’s another approach? Nature was telling Darwin a different story. What if that telling is meant to revise that particular view of creation, and that particular reading of Genesis as though it were a scientific telling? What if design from a pre-existing blueprint isn’t the right metaphor for God’s creative work? What if his creative work was more emergent, mediated through means. Is it any less creation and is it any less marvelous?
It’s our job to see what nature is telling us and take it seriously, precisely because we believe that nature is the work of his hands. And then to let that reality bear in on us so that our reading of Scripture is affected. Just as we no longer read the geo-centric solar symstem texts as literal. Or the texts about the earth being “built on foundations” or there being waters below the sky and above the sky held back in storehouses.
I think what you have is an even more marvelous understanding of the origin of species-creation than the somewhat magical “poof–it’s here, a squirrel, from nothing!” version that Darwin rejected. God is the creator of the squirrel but he worked as Jonathan Edwards says he always does, through means. WE just know more about the means than we used to.
But this requires us to reject the category error that we have inherited, the one that says “creation” and “evolution” are mutually exclusive. Darwin may have though they were, but does that make it so? Are we to take him as our expert on the appropriate reading of Genesis? He never claimed expertise on this. Was the church of his day the final arbiter of what creation means? I think not. Are we to take Richard Dawkins as the final arbiter on these matters? Not me, thank you. No, we have to do the work of understanding how the Bible can be true and the science, complementary truths.
I’m more engaged and excited about creation after taking time to understand evolution. I’m more convinced of God’s marvelous creation. I get more out of Genesis than before. It’s one of my favorite texts to meditate on. I feel-see-sense God’s immanent presence in the world now than before.
SOrry for the long response, and my not having time to review for typos, etc.
September 15th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Ken, you have said that “I do not read Adam and Eve as historical figures.” Please don’t take my comments as attacking you personally. These are just my thoughts and the knots in my gut that won’t let go…
Does someone have to believe in a historical literal Adam to come to faith in a historical literal Christ? I don’t think so, but if you do believe in a historical literal Jesus, the scriptures don’t make much sense without a historical literal Adam. And if the “first man” Adam was a symbolic figure, who’s to say the “last man” Christ is not symbolic? If the “first man” Adam was a symbol, or representation of Christ, and not a man. How can that symbol, be a symbol of a symbol? I am obviously confused…
Another thought, with so much emphasis on the beginnings, we lose sight on where we are headed. Jesus is leading us into the future, and we are mucked up with the past. These earthen vessels, with all their wonderful design from the creator, will perish, or be changed. It is the “last man” with the promise of the new, that loves me, intrigues me and pulls me in.
(Figurative emphasis mine)
Genesis 5 This is the written account of the descendants of (Figurative) Adam…When (Figurative) Adam was 130 years old,…After the birth of Seth, (Figurative) Adam lived another 800 years,…(Figurative) Adam lived 930 years, and then he died.
Luke 3:38 Kenan was the son of Enosh. Enosh was the son of Seth. Seth was the son of (Figurative) Adam. (Figurative) Adam was the son of God.
Rom 5 When (Figurative) Adam sinned, sin entered the world. (Figurative) Adam’s sin brought death,…Still, everyone died—from the time of (Figurative) Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey…as (Figurative) Adam did. Now (Figurative) Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come. But there is a great difference between (Figurative) Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, (Figurative) Adam, brought death to many…For (Figurative) Adam’s sin led to condemnation,…For the sin of this one man, (Figurative) Adam, caused death to rule over many…Yes, (Figurative) Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone,…But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous.
1 Corinthians 15 The Scriptures tell us, “The first man, (Figurative) Adam, became a living person.” But the last Adam—that is, Christ—is a life-giving Spirit. (Figurative) Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth,…we will someday be like the heavenly man.
Jude 1:14 Enoch, who lived in the seventh generation after (Figurative) Adam, prophesied about these people. He said, “Listen! The Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy ones.
September 16th, 2010 at 9:17 am
gem, fair questions…. I’d start of by the simple observation that Genesis is very old–at least 2500 years old, with sources going back earlier than that. So we would all want to approach any reading of the text with humility. What did this text mean to the original hearers–that is how did they read it? The Hebrew itself is a challenge to translate, etc. The thought forms of that era VERY different than our own. Humility to realize we bring our own modern assumptions to our reading, chief among them is a tendency to think that the modern-scientific, “historically accurate” forms of truth telling are far superior to other forms of truth telling.
KNowing this, we want to hold our readings somewhat lightly, especially as regards how this text lines up with our understanding of origins. As my nephew says, “Evangelicals get all bent out of shape about the parts of the story we know least about–the very beginning and the very end.”
If one were to read the genealogies figuratively, rather than literally, one would say they convey very important truths. The convention of the geneaology was a common way of telling a story in the ancient world, but a foreign way of telling a story in our world. Ancients would see things in a genealogy that we wouldn’t. To us it’s just a boring record.
For one thing, the genealogy would say that all humans have human descendants back to the first human. Particular ancestors whose identities inform ours. In the Hebrew the name are full of code. Enosh for example is another word for human that stresses the mortality of a human, post-Adam. The descending length of years is a figure for the degradation in human life as civilization advances–a certain irony there, what we see as “progress” has a heavy cost. VArious of the names represent the competing interest as civilization unfolds: cain is farmer, abel a hunter gatherer, two different forms of early humanity with big implications. Iron workers appear through the genealogy, artisans, all aspects of emerging civilization. The numbers of generations are often significant. So it’s loaded with meaning in the figurative reading.All that I have time for now…
September 17th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Have to weigh in again:
“If one were to read the genealogies figuratively, rather than literally…”
As I have pointed out already, there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that such verses (verses that reference early Gen.–it’s people and events) are to be interpreted as anything but literal historical events and people. The only reason to do so is to try and fit evolutionary theory with the Bible.
As someone who has studied this more than me has pointed out: “There are at least 165 passages in Genesis that are either directly quoted or clearly referred to throughout the New Testament. Included in these are more than 100 quotations or direct reference to Genesis, chapters 1 through 11…Throughout the Old and New Testament, Genesis is quoted from or referred to more than any other book in the entire Bible.”
September 17th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Trevor, I thought we agreed to disagree a while back there.
Your assumption seems to be that if portions of Genesis are read as anything other than historical or scientifically accurate, then they are not divinely inspired, lose all truth, etc. Can’t accept that assumption. The fact that it is quoted 165 times in NT is expected. Jesus is the beginning of the New Creation, how could it be otherwise. The references do not lose their inspiration or truth bearing capacity just because they are read as something other than historical. Thankfully our faith in Jesus doesn’t stand or fall based on whether we read Genesis as science and/or actual history or not. Bless you, brother!
September 17th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Yes, we agreed to disagree. I thought you were beginning to miss me.
September 22nd, 2010 at 6:33 pm
~
Trevor, ha! Perfect response (@ September 17th, 2010 at 9:05 pm)!
Trevor, thing is – intrinsic evidence in favor of analogical or figurative constructions of the genealogies, that is, intrinsic evidence from inside the texts of the genealogies themselves, would be evidence that is question-begging as a literary form, and worse, such evidence would also be begging for the death sentence by any ancient near eastern master oralist telling his oral stories around the campfire, if he did tell his audience of local “kings” (i.e., tribal chieftains) that the same genealogy which the oral master-story-teller just recited to the king was not a true genealogy after all, and the genealogy was just composed – despite the fact that some of the genealogies were just that, composed around campfires. In other words, any evidence (dig this: any evidence at all – just a scintilla of evidence) for a figurative reading of ancient near eastern genealogies would more likely come from extrinsic evidence (higher critical studies – historical and literary forms of the time). Why? – simple. Simple because ancient near eastern genealogies both guarded property rights (I’m a lawyer) and simultaneously chronicled divine-right claims to religious authority and religious obedience inside your camp/tribe (I’m also a pastor) – so those ancient near eastern genealogies take themselves seriously enough to impose death penalties if you cross your local chief, and, any evidence of literary composition or figurative readings would need to come from extrinsic evidence (higher critical studies of historical and literary forms – but, I’m charismatic and evangelical, so go figure).
In not telling you what you should believe. I’m not telling you what evidence you should credit or discredit (“let every man be fully convinced in his own mind,” Romans 12). I’m pointing out no more than the simple fact that if it’s evidence that you want for any kind of figurative readings of the genealogies, then it would be suicidal for the story teller and suicidal for the text itself to present such evidence intrinsically – evidence for a figurative reading would and will come more readily depending on where you look for the evidence (higher critical studies – history and literary forms), and on whether you’re willing to look at any evidence at all to challenge your current reading. For just one example of the oral tradition of nomadic story tellers spinning and composing genealogies at campfires to give bragging rights to tribal chiefs, see Walter Ong, “Orality and Literacy” – not an endorsement of Ong, I’m just saying see the evidence, because evidence is there.
The more overwhelmingly evidenced evidence for literary-form borrowing in the bible involves the biblical covenant taking the then popular cultural structure of a suzerain-vassal covenant form. That particular cow is already out of the barn – figuratively speaking.
Then again, none of this evidence seals the deal: because anyone who wants to do so, may still say that all the genealogies and covenant forms are simultaneously borrowed genres (have some figurative element) and are historically true. There will never be an end to this mode of argument because evidence is only evidence. Evidence is not final proof. There’s no deal breaker here. We don’t really have certainty, but instead, we just think we do. Short of the other side of our mortal veil of partial knowledge (“for we know in part”), we have – just evidence. Yes, there is “some evidence” for examining the genealogies as literary forms.
Our mileage – yours and mine – with that evidence will vary.
When we marshal our giants to fight for us (on analogy to David v. Goliath) today, then we marshal giant voices like Billy Graham (if we’re Protestant) or the Pope (if we’re Catholic) who tell us that the bible can be consistent with evolutionary science, and we bring in Ken Miller and Francis Collins (scientists) in tow to agree with these giants, and then, we pit these giants against giants on the other side, like Behe and Dembski (ID scientists who fight against Collins and Miller) plus we summon name-your-favorite giant of ID theology or your favorite young-earth theologian (Dr. Dobson? – if he qualifies as a theologian? – John MacArthur, or, the whole faculty at Dallas Seminary? – or, whoever) – so we line up our giants (despite the fact that both science and theology are better than this, and, neither science nor theology really work this way), and the only thing we really learn in the end is that our giants on either side cannot settle the problem with a final consensus.
So we end up – if we are charitable – making agreements to disagree.
And keep loving each other.
So, kudos to you (Trevor) and Ken for just that – agreements to disagree.
Cheers
Jim
October 13th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
no blog posts in a month and a half! waiting….
January 26th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Ken,
I just read your essay “Science and The Evangelical Mission” on Q. As a Christian and a Ph.D. in molecular/cellular biologist, I say THANK YOU!
I read this with a sigh of relief that someone in the evangelical church actually “gets it.” I guess I’m evangelical if I have to put a label on myself but for the very reasons outlined in Ken’s piece mentioned above, I struggled to identify fully with evangelicals who dismiss science altogether.
I live in a very “blue” area of the country where people have ruled out Christianity in favor of science or other spiritual practices.
I would love to see a church in my area that addresses the issues of science and Christianity as Ken does. As it now stands, there are hardly any evangelical churches in my area, and those that do exist are not attended by many/if any scientists. I am married to a scientist, who feels as most scientists do, that Christianity excludes reason and logic. This prevents him from ever wanting to darken the door of a church. As a scientist and follower of Jesus, this has always frustrated & paralyzed me as to how to change this idea that people of faith can’t be people of logic or reason. I know as a scientist/Christian I have to do better and so should the church as a whole to reconcile our faith with science.
I am glad I found your blog and your essay, Ken.
Thank you for your insight!