It occurred to me that my “final thoughts” for a graduate course I have been teaching for the past four weeks might provide the fodder for this week’s blog entry. Given the topics that I was scheduled to present at the recent Common Slaves Spring Conference on the theme “Christ is King—The World according to the Creator.” My two sessions were canceled because of illness. Those two sessions were:
• “The Creator Reports His Creative Acts”—“The Creator’s Own Realistic Account of Creation: Interpretation of Genesis 1-3 is Neither Literal Nor Figurative.”
• “No Adam; No Christ”—No Historical Adam? No Historical Christ.—Why Adam’s Historicity is Essential to the Good News as it is in Jesus.”
For snowflakes and easily triggered soft Evangelicals, I administer this warning: I fully realize that much of what I state may be deeply offensive to readers who like to straddle ditches with one foot clinging desperately to the evangelical faith with the other foot firmly planted in evolutionary scientism. Of course, no one will admit to embracing “evolutionary scientism.” Instead, they devise appealing designations. For example, Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project and now Director of the National Institutes of Health, cleverly invented BioLogos as a term to replace “Theistic Evolution,” which has also been subjected to efforts by theistic evolutionists to ameliorate it by calling themselves “Evolutionary Creationists.”
During one single week in December 2018, as the Human Genome Project concluded various media reported the conclusions of scientific inquiry concerning the origins of humanity. The Daily Mail, The Mirror, and the New York Post report that all humans have descended from two people. Forbes, on the other hand, disputes these reports. This should hardly surprise anyone. There is no uniform “science” position on anything. After all, individuals with vastly different and competing worldviews, beliefs, assumptions, presuppositions, starting points, and even agendas participate in the field of study called “science.” And it is crucial to note that science is a “field of study,” a method of research. Hence, scientists interpret research data differently depending heavily on their own presuppositions, beliefs, worldview, etc. In other words, philosophical, theological, and religious beliefs factor into conclusions that scientists draw from their research.
Thus, what is taking place now took place earlier. Concerning the study of the Human Genome, the same claims and counter-claims that have been made historically also emerged as Francis Collins brought the Human Genome Project to its close. Reports just like those in the Daily Mail, The Mirror, and the New York Post were published that made the claim that the Genome Project demonstrated that all humans derived from a single pair of humans. Many Christians got all excited as if scientists proved what they had always believed. That excitement was short-lived because Francis Collins, a professing Christian, who had been appointed the head of the Human Genome Project by President Clinton, shortly afterward published his The Language of God in which he emphatically insists that belief in evolution is the only viable belief concerning the origins of humans and that humans descended from not a single pair of humans, a ridiculous notion, but from no fewer than 10,000 humanoids. Collins and his acolytes make this claim with self-assured confidence.
Despite Collins’ excessive claims that Evangelicals regard sciences as a problem, science, which is a method of research and study, has never posed a problem to the Christian faith. Science cannot pose a problem to our Christian faith any more than Mathematics or Music or any other discipline can. Why can science not pose a problem for Christianity? Contrary to the popular way that scientists carelessly use the word “science,” science is not a set of conclusions but a method of research. In fact, modern scientific inquiry was led by many Christian individuals. The conflict is falsely framed by many as if it were between science and Christianity or between science and Christian faith. This is a fundamentally false framing of the issue. Science makes no claims; scientists do make claims, and scientists regularly make astonishingly exaggerated claims, as Francis Collins does, that subsequent research compels them to reassess, to modify, and even to retract. The conflicts are between the claims of Scripture and the claims that scientists are making concerning the origins of the universe and of humanity. And, yes, many professing Christians, both scientists and biblical scholars make claims contrary to Scripture’s claims and do so under the awe-inspiring authority of “science.” Consider, for example, Denis Lamoureux’s candid rejection of Scripture’s affirmation. Lamoureux expressly affirms that Scripture tells us how God created all things, but Scripture is wrong: “Holy Scripture makes statements about how God created the heavens that in fact never happened. . . . Holy Scripture makes statements about how God created living organisms that in fact never happened” (“No Historical Adam,” Four Views on the Historical Adam, eds. Barrett & Caneday, 54, 56, emphasis original).
Theistic evolutionists insist that science’s claims require a re-interpretation of Genesis 1-3, if not all of Genesis 1-11, concerning the origins of all things. Of course, they are delighted to tell fellow Christians how Evangelicalism misled them to read incorrectly the creation account of Genesis 1-2, and they are eager to sell their books to naive Christians who embrace their supposedly deep and profound expert exegetical arguments rooted in the so-called science of the Ancient Near East (ANE) as they advance exegetical claims that only highly educated scholars and experts could dream up.
Today, as was true 100 years ago, again, just about every facet of Christian theology is being questioned. This includes the Christian doctrine of creation. As Darwinian evolution and refined theories of evolution rivaled Christian teaching 100 years ago, so various strains of evolution have renewed their virulence and once again challenge Christian teachings concerning creation. This includes cosmology, geology, and biology. It seems that ever-increasing numbers of folks who have confessed to being Evangelicals are embracing evolution. Once such folks openly embraced “theistic evolution,” which is what Francis Collins has embraced by relabeling it with a much more pleasant-sounding and more appealing name, BioLogos.
Now, folks in Christian churches are embracing evolution, but they want to soften the term by calling themselves “evolutionary creationists” because you see, they profess to believe that God created and built into his creation the capacity for the entirety of creation to “self-evolve” or “self-develop” (their terms), notions that move, at least nudge Christians away from theism toward deism. Consider, again, Denis Lamoureux’s claim: “the Creator planned the Big Bang and preloaded it with the ability for the universe and life to self-assemble over 13.8 billion years, with humans emerging as the pinnacle of the evolutionary process” (Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes! 119). These folks are absolutely convinced that “science” has proved that evolution is true beyond any shadow of a doubt. As I observe above, they use the word “science” wrongly as if science were a set of confirmed conclusions and beliefs rather than a field of study or a method of research. Science makes no claims of its own. Thus, science is not in competition with Scripture. Scientists make claims and scientists who make claims that challenge Scripture’s claims are in competition with Scripture. And, professing Christians, such as Francis Collins, Denis Lamoureux, Peter Enns, Kenton Sparks, John Walton, and others have become quite evangelistic about their stance, so much that, for example, Denis Lamoureux contends that unless evangelical churches accept “evolutionary creation” as true, more and more young people who leave their local churches to attend universities will abandon the Christian faith because they will find it impossible to hold simultaneously the proven and indubitable teachings of evolution and their Christian faith that banishes belief in evolution. So, Lamoureux and others have completely flipped the task of apologetics from time immemorial. Instead of doing as apologists have historically done, namely, argue that Christianity and evolution are incompatible because evolution is contrary to God’s Word, Lamoureux and others now insist that Christians must embrace evolution to make Christianity palatable to their maturing teenagers and college students. Otherwise, their children will defect from the Christian faith. Such is the nature of the argument today. Such is the inverted nature of the current discussion.
Sadly, many succumb to the arguments made by such scholars as Francis Collins, Peter Enns, Kenton Sparks, John Walton, Denis Lamoureux, and others who loudly, boldly, and with an air of authority preach their beliefs and ridicule beliefs Christians have held from ancient times. And yes, they do ridicule both those who affirm the belief and the belief itself that the Genesis account of creation is factual. Yet, their arguments are profoundly problematic, weak, and rooted in serious misunderstandings of the historic Christian doctrine of Divine Accommodation (a matter I have addressed here, here, here, and here), but also rooted in an altogether too heady confidence in “science” as though it were a set of unquestioned canonical conclusions. Much more work needs to be done to demonstrate that all of them not only fail badly to represent science correctly but also fail to represent correctly the historic teachings of Christianity which leads them to exploit their misrepresentation to their own advantage. Essays, theses, seminars, conferences, and books need to be engaged to respond to these scholars, who like their counterparts of 100 years ago, lead Evangelicals to abandon their Christian faith as they head toward an increasingly different belief system that will end up as it did 100 years ago, as Liberalism.
Science poses no conflict with our Christian faith. Scientism, being embraced by many who insist on stretching Evangelicalism to the breaking point, poses enormous conflicts with our Christian faith. There is nothing incompatible in science as a methodology with Christianity. In fact, modern science was born by Protestants who engaged in thinking deeply concerning the diverse aspects of God’s vast creation. Once again, the problem is not a conflict between science and Christian belief. Rather, the problem comes when we treat science as something more than it is and most people are not informed sufficiently in terms of how we think and consider these issues from philosophical and theological perspectives to counter the dogmatic assertions of the so-called experts.
It is impossible for the scientific method to answer the ultimate questions of the universe, nor can it really speak capably to events and circumstances that cannot be repeated or empirically verified. Scientism purports to do that and what it claims is always more than it can ever actually prove. When Evangelicals flirt with scientism, as those named above have done and continue to do, they flirt with disaster and lead others into the grave danger of abandoning their Christian faith.
Yes, I realize that I am making strong statements. I understand that what I am saying may cause some to take offense, even deep offense. But, frankly, as a minister of the gospel and as a teacher of God’s Word, it is incumbent that I speak truthfully concerning both what Scripture teaches and how and in what ways today’s so-called evangelical scholars are defecting from God’s Word as they are being seduced to appease the gods of science. This is why I wrote the essay, “The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis & Historicity in Paul’s Gospel.” This is why my friend Matthew Barrett and I dreamed up the project that became Four Views on the Historical Adam. It also motivated me many years ago to write “Veiled Glory: God’s Self-Revelation in Human Likeness—A Biblical Theology of God’s Anthropomorphic Self-Disclosure,” a forerunner to my essay on the historicity of Adam. I will continue to address these matters as I have opportunities.
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Afterword: Attentive readers will recognize that the important distinction between science and scientism also applies to much of what we have been subjected to for well over a year by those who keep telling us that they are “following the science” of virology. Science, it is not. Scientism, it is.