Repost: The most offensive verse in the Bible

by Dan Phillips

If life is funny, blogging is a laff riot. The oddest thing I've learned about it is that predicting the impact of my posts is — at least for me — completely impossible. More times than I can say, I've posted something that by rights should have created a tsunami response... and then, biff! Nothing. 

Then on the other hand, there are posts like this one. The thought occurred to me as I described, I sat down and dashed it off, and it became our most popular post, ever. It has been reprinted, cited by AIG's Dr. Georgia Purdom, used by Doug Wilson in debating Andrew Sullivan about "gay mirage," and so forth. As I write, it's received 38,716 views. The next runner-up received 29,173.

I'm deeply grateful that folks have found it helpful, but I never would have predicted it.

Today at 2:00pm, Texas time, Janet Mefferd and I will have a chat about the post and its implications. I thought it might help to make this easily available.

In the Sunday School class at CBC we're doing a series called Marriage, the Bible and You. In the second lesson of the series, I brought up the subject of secular talk shows and how they like to try to beat up on Christians of any size, shape, and significance about whatever topic they think is most embarrassing and controversial. Of course, at the moment it's "gay" "marriage," or the topic of homosexuality at all.

In the course of the lesson, I remarked that I think — from the comfortable quiet safety of my study — that I'd take a different approach.

When Piers or Larry or Tavis or Rosie or Ellen or The View or whoever tried probing me about homosexuality, or wifely submission, or any other area where God has spoken (to the world's consternation), I think I'd decline the worm altogether. I think instead, I'd say something like,

"You know, TaPierRosEllRy, when you ask me about X, you're obviously picking a topic that is deeply offensive to non-Christians — but it's far from the most offensive thing I believe. You're just nibbling at the edge of one of the relatively minor leaves on the Tree of Offense. Let me do you a favor, and just take you right down to the root. Let me take you to the most offensive thing I believe.

"The most offensive thing I believe is Genesis 1:1, and everything it implies.

"That is, I believe in a sovereign Creator who is Lord and Definer of all. Everything in the universe — the planet, the laws of physics, the laws of morality, you, me — everything was created by Another, was designed by Another, was given value and definition by Another. God is Creator and Lord, and so He is ultimate. That means we are created and subjects, and therefore derivative and dependent.

"Therefore, we are not free to create meaning or value. We have only two options. We can discover the true value assigned by the Creator and revealed in His Word, the Bible; or we can rebel against that meaning.

"Any time you bring up questions about any of these issues, you do so from one of two stances. You either do it as someone advocating and enabling rebellion against the Creator's design, or as someone seeking submissive understanding of that design. You do it as servant or rebel. There is no third option.

"So yeah, insofar as I'm consistent with my core beliefs, everything I think about sexuality, relationships, morals, the whole nine yards, all of it is derived from what the Creator says. If I deviate from that, I'm wrong.

"To anyone involved in the doomed, damned you-shall-be-as-God project, that is the most offensive truth in the world, and it is the most offensive belief I hold.

"But if I can say one more thing, the first noun in that verse — beginning — immediately points us forward. It points to the end. And the end is all about Jesus Christ. That takes us to the topic of God's world-tilting Gospel, and that's what we really need to talk about."

I mean, why quibble about minor offenses, when we know how to take them right to the mother lode of all offense — that God is God, and we are not?

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The most offensive verse in the Bible

by Dan Phillips

In the Sunday School class at CBC we're doing a series called Marriage, the Bible and You. In the second lesson of the series, I brought up the subject of secular talk shows and how they like to try to beat up on Christians of any size, shape, and significance about whatever topic they think is most embarrassing and controversial. Of course, at the moment it's "gay" "marriage," or the topic of homosexuality at all.s

In the course of the lesson, I remarked that I think — from the comfortable quiet safety of my study — that I'd take a different approach.

When Piers or Larry or Tavis or Rosie or Ellen or The View or whoever tried probing me about homosexuality, or wifely submission, or any other area where God has spoken (to the world's consternation), I think I'd decline the worm altogether. I think instead, I'd say something like,

"You know, TaPierRosEllRy, when you ask me about X, you're obviously picking a topic that is deeply offensive to non-Christians — but it's far from the most offensive thing I believe. You're just nibbling at the edge of one of the relatively minor leaves on the Tree of Offense. Let me do you a favor, and just take you right down to the root. Let me take you to the most offensive thing I believe.

"The most offensive thing I believe is Genesis 1:1, and everything it implies.

"That is, I believe in a sovereign Creator who is Lord and Definer of all. Everything in the universe — the planet, the laws of physics, the laws of morality, you, me — everything was created by Another, was designed by Another, was given value and definition by Another. God is Creator and Lord, and so He is ultimate. That means we are created and subjects, and therefore derivative and dependent.

"Therefore, we are not free to create meaning or value. We have only two options. We can discover the true value assigned by the Creator and revealed in His Word, the Bible; or we can rebel against that meaning.

"Any time you bring up questions about any of these issues, you do so from one of two stances. You either do it as someone advocating and enabling rebellion against the Creator's design, or as someone seeking submissive understanding of that design. You do it as servant or rebel. There is no third option.

"So yeah, insofar as I'm consistent with my core beliefs, everything I think about sexuality, relationships, morals, the whole nine yards, all of it is derived from what the Creator says. If I deviate from that, I'm wrong.

"To anyone involved in the doomed, damned you-shall-be-as-God project, that is the most offensive truth in the world, and it is the most offensive belief I hold.

"But if I can say one more thing, the first noun in that verse — beginning — immediately points us forward. It points to the end. And the end is all about Jesus Christ. That takes us to the topic of God's world-tilting Gospel, and that's what we really need to talk about."

I mean, why quibble about minor offenses, when we know how to take them right to the mother lode of all offense — that God is God, and we are not?

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If you're going to snip, you should snip this verse

by Dan Phillips

Folks at war with God have always snipped out the parts of the Bible that they didn't like. Rationalist critics in the 19th-21st centuries have turned Biblical authorship claims into pious lies at best, rationalized prophecies and miracles to remove, well, prophecy and miracles. Anything that offended their rival philosophy was discarded by one elaborate contrivance or another.

Some are less artful. A well-known actor, whom I won't name in the post for my wife's sake, tries to ameliorate his guilt over pursuing his slavery to unnatural desires by snipping out unwelcome passages from Gideon's Bibles in motel rooms. This is vandalism as therapy, evidently yet another pursuit of the idle rich.

It has occurred to me, however, that every one of these folks could save themselves a lot of trouble. Just one snip is all it would take.

Snip out Genesis 1:1.

Among the things the decades have brought to me is a deepening appreciation of the opening chapters of Genesis, and particularly of the first verse. As S. Lewis Johnson once remarked, if you believe Genesis 1:1, nothing in all the rest of the Bible is incredible. Reject it, and all goes with it.

If some poor soul with endless time on his hands were to survey my sermons and writings for allusions to Bible chapters in, say, the last decade, I'm guessing the opening chapters of Genesis would be 'way up there. My first book starts in the first chapters of Genesis, and camps there a good long while before even trying to assail the rest of the Bible's narrative. My sermons and studies at least touch base there very frequently. Last Sunday I was in Titus 1:15-16, but opening those verses led us back to Genesis 1, 2 and 3.

In Genesis 1:1 we find a sovereign, self-existing, timeless, omniscient God creating the universe by fiat. Simply because He wants it to exist, because He wills it to exist, it comes to exist. There is none of the struggle and bloodshed of contemporary myths. Simply one God, creating all things the way He wants to create them, simply because He wants to for His own glorious reasons.

Much follows from this simple fact, this simple act. Because He pre-existed everything, God is independent of everything, and everything is dependent on Him. Because all that is exists as a reflection of His will, the universe is neither undefined nor self-defining. It is pre-defined. Scrooge isn't wrong when he says "An ant is what it is and a grasshopper is what it is" (though he is wrong about Christmas). He just didn't go far enough, and add that the ant and the grasshopper are what they are as created and defined by a sovereign God.

And so is man. So while the emergent and the PoMo alike gaze inward to the endless morass of their own subjectivity, and while the immoral pursue their cravings, and while the materialistic pretends to acknowledge nothing beyond "molecules in motion," their pursuit is a charade. It reminds us of the riddle:

Question: if we call a tail a "leg," how many legs does a dog have? 

Answer: four. It doesn't matter what you call it, a tail is a tail.

And so with ourselves. We can self-realize and self-actualize and self-affirm and self-love all we like, but we are creatures of a sovereign God. Our choices are only two: believe Him and think accordingly; or to come up with a diverting ruse.

But the ruse will always be a lie, and its pursuit will always be a doomed and damned enterprise.

As Genesis 1:1 reminds us. It reminds us by what it says about the beginning; but it also does that by its very use of the word, "beginning." Because just as the word "black" makes one think of "white," and "up" brings to mind "down," what does the word "beginning" suggest?

"End."

And this was Moses' very intent in writing the word. For as he brought this first movement of his narrative to a conclusion, what he wanted to write about was the "end of the days" (Genesis 49:1, literal Hebrew). That "end" would be a time when the He who had the right to rule would come with His scepter, and would reign over all the peoples (Gen. 49:10). Rebellion would be ended, prosperity would arise.

And as Genesis ends, so ends the Bible, with a vision of all rebellion defeated, Christ made head over all (cf. Eph. 1:10 Gk.), and God and His people reconciled forever in a glorious new Eden (Rev. 21—22).

Genesis 1:1 is the first sign-post, pointing to that inevitable resolution.

Which is why it should really be the first to go.

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God Meant It for Good

by Phil Johnson



he beginning and end of Genesis make an interesting contrast. The book starts with "In the beginning God . . . " but ends with the words, " . . . in a coffin in Egypt."

The opening chapter of Genesis is about creation; the closing chapter is about death. At the beginning, Adam is placed in a beautiful garden surrounded by life and divine blessings. At the end, the body of Jacob is interred in a cave with the bodies of Abraham, and Sarah, and Isaac, and Rebekah, and Leah. And Joseph's body is kept in a coffin in Egypt, awaiting burial in that same cave. Pretty dismal stuff, when you think about it.

The rest of Genesis is the chronicle of how sin entered the human race and brought catastrophe and divine wrath again and again. God's judgment against the sin of the human race is a repeated theme. There's a worldwide flood, the confusion of languages at Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

In fact, from a human perspective, the Genesis account often seems like things are totally out of control. Human history begins with the fall of Adam, and everything gets worse from there. It gets so bad that in Genesis 6, God simply wiped out the whole human race and started over again with one family. But even after that, the human race seemed bent on wickedness. So God confounded their languages and dispersed them around the globe. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. And by the time you get into the heart of Genesis, there are almost no righteous people in a world of paganism and evil. Abraham is the one person who is truly devoted to Jehovah. (According to 2 Peter 2:8, Abraham's nephew, Lot, was a righteous man. But he was so thoroughly worldly that he serves only as a negative example.) Abraham's own family is seriously dysfunctional, and major family troubles persist in every generation, right through to the end of Genesis.

Finally, internal strife tears the chosen family apart when Abraham's great grandchildren sell their brother Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Then a famine forces the rest of the family to seek refuge in Egypt, and the book of Genesis ends (it more or less just grinds to a halt) with the death of Joseph in that foreign land.

The whole story, on a purely human level, is both disturbing and discouraging.

But through it all, there is a subtle thread of redemption, and Genesis gives us enough of the divine perspective to reassure us that God is completely in control. He has a good purpose in the midst of all this misery and strife. Evil may seem to have the upper hand, but God will triumph.

That, of course, is the great lesson of Genesis. It is the very lesson the story of Joseph and his brothers is designed to relate. It's a lesson about the sovereignty of God, even in the face of human rebellion. And it's summed up in that final chapter in Joseph's brief words to his brothers after the death of their father: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive" (Genesis 50:21).

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Walking the Dog

by Frank Turk

After much waiting and a very severe lack of time for me in the last two weeks, finally we get to Pastor Tim Keller's paper, available at the BioLogos website, regarding "Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople." Let me say this clearly: I think the people who run BioLogos didn't actually read this paper. In fact, I think a lot of people who have criticized this paper have not read this paper, so have a synopsis of the work itself with some analysis, and then come closing remarks.

Keller wisely breaks the paper up into clear subheadings:
1. What's the Problem?
2. Pastors and people
3. Three Questions of Laypeople
4. Concluding Thoughts

Keller defines the problem as he sees it precisely:

Many  believers  in  western  culture  see  the   medical  and  technological  advances  achieved  through  science  and  are  grateful  for  them.    They  have  a   very  positive  view  of  science.    How  then,  can  they  reconcile  what  science  seems  to  tell  them  about   evolution  with  their  traditional  theological  beliefs?

And as I blogged last week, there's no reason to think it's either science or religion -- it's entirely right-minded to see science as a tool which man uses in his God-ordained place to be in dominion over the world.

In his second section, Keller also wisely sees the problem as having four main points of difficulty for orthodox protestants: Biblical authority; the confusion of biology and philosophy (I would say the problem is "conflation", but let Keller have his own say here); the historicity of Adam and Eve; and the problem of evil. And the reason for his lining out of these problems is explicitly pastoral -- that is, these are the questions real people have when they come to their pastors because we live in a world where science is seen as somehow prophetic, somehow authoritative and able to speak to all things when in fact it only speaks to a few. But as he moves to the three main questions these four points of difficulty make obvious, Pastor Keller says this:

if  I  as  a  pastor  want  to  help  both  believers  and  inquirers  to  relate  science  and  faith   coherently,  I  must  read  the  works  of  scientists,  exegetes,  philosophers,  and  theologians  and  then  interpret   them  for  my  people.  Someone  might  counter  that  this  is  too  great  a  burden  to  put  on  pastors,  that  instead  distilling  and  understanding  the  writings  of  scholars  in  various  disciplines,  how  will  our  laypeople  do  it? This  is  one  of  the  things  that  parishioners  want  from  their  pastors.  We  are  to  be  a  bridge  between  the know  that  there  has  ever  been  a  culture  in  which  the  job  of  the  pastor  has  been  more  challenging.   Nevertheless,  I  believe  this  is  our  calling.

And he's right: it is actually part of the pastoral calling to be a voice of discernment for the people he is shepherding -- and sometimes that's going to including knowing more than what's printed on the page of the English Bible. We call that "apologetics" in most church circles -- and it's a godly pursuit when followed for pastoral reasons.

So here are his three questions:

1. If God used evolution to create, then we can't take Genesis 1 literally, and if we can't do that, why take any other part of the Bible literally?

2. If  biological  evolution  is  true, does  that  mean  that  we  are  just  animals  driven  by  our   genes,  and  everything  about  us  can  be  explained  by  natural  selection?

3. If  biological  evolution  is  true  and  there  was  no  historical  Adam  and  Eve  how  can  we  know   where  sin  and  suffering  came  from?

Before covering his answers to these questions, let me suggest something: the first significant error in this paper is that Pastor Keller is being too simplistic in the answers he gives to these questions. For example, his answer to question 1 doesn't address at all that, in spite of the alleged "genre" Genesis, the most time-honored and ancient reading of Genesis 1 is that this is the history of creation and not some other liturgical/poetic section of Scripture intended to convey "Truth" but not actually describe any true things.

What Pastor Keller does in answering these questions has a pastoral motive -- but it also has another motive which I would suggest is competing with his better angel, and that's the motive to speak to the fears inherent in unbelief.

So in answering the question of whether we can take any of the Bible "literally" if Gen 1 is not "literal", Pastor Keller forgets to include the copious references from the rest of the Bible to Genesis 1 which make it clear that God created in days, and that these days formed our concept of the week, and that his rest at the end of it created the sabbath. He forgets the copious references in OT and NT to Adam as a person who lives in a lineage which leads to Jesus. He forgets that the Serpent in the garden is the father of all lies, and was a murderer from the beginning. Instead he gives an alternative explanation for Genesis 1-3 which is meant to allay fear in the supernatural aspect of the events, and to appeal to people who have other intellectual commitments. I find this interesting from a fellow who speaks so vibrantly elsewhere on the subject of the Gospel destroying our idols.

In the second question, he then turns to the problem which his first question actually creates: that is, doesn't factual evolution trump literary or poetical conceit? Doesn't the fact that man is an animal like all the other animals (rather than the special creation who was given to name all the animals) make man morally just another animal? Keller's answer here is not very convincing -- even if its pastoral stripes show.

His answer is that it's actually only a prior commitment to naturalism which makes this logic necessarily true. He references Plantinga on this point, and says that "Christian  pastors,  theologians,  and  scientists  who  want  to   argue  for  an  [evolutionary process]  account  of  origins  must  put  a  great  deal  of  emphasis  at  the  same  time  on  arguing   against  [grand evolutionary theory]." But the question he leaves unanswered then is "why?" Why argue for the evolutionary process as the one which produces both chimps and Pastor Kellers only to say, "but that doesn't mean anything metaphysically?"

The argument to go there, he says, looks like this:

Does  natural  selection  (alone)  give  us   cognitive  faculties  (sense  perception,  rational  intuition  about  those  perceptions,  and  our  memory  of   them)  that  produce  true  beliefs  about  the  real  world?  In  as  far  as  true  belief  produces  survival  behavior, yes.  But  who  can  say  how  far  that  is?  If  a  theory  makes  it  impossible  to  trust  our  minds,  then  it  also  makes   it  impossible  to  be  sure  about  anything  our  minds  tell  us-­‐-­‐including  macro-­‐evolution  itself-­‐-­‐  and   everything  else. Any  theory  that  makes  it  impossible  to  trust  our  minds  is  self-­‐defeating.

It's one of those arguments, as they say, which destroys the village in order to capture the village. Sure: it's sort of a classic presuppositional argument which may be logically flawless, but it is also one of those arguments too smart by half which leaves most people feeling like you're trying way too hard.

What if you said instead, "well, it seems to me that if I have to posit the supernatural anyway to be epistemologically-sure that my perceptions of my personhood are true, I'll trust the whole shootin' match for meaning to what God has said -- and then science can then be my servant rather than a competing master."

The reason to say that, btw, is to avoid having to say what Pastor Keller says in his third Q & A. But before we get to his third answer, we should read carefully his disclaimer:

I  find  the  concerns  of  this  question  much  more  well-­‐grounded.  Indeed,  I  must  disclose,  I   share  them.  Many  orthodox  Christians  who  believe  God  used  EBP  to  bring  about  human  life  not  only  do   not  take  Genesis  1  as  history,  but  also  deny  that  Genesis  2  is  an  account  of  real  events.  Adam  and  Eve,  in   their  view,  were  not  historical  figures  but  an  allegory  or  symbol  of  the  human  race.  Genesis  2,  then,  is  a   symbolic  story  or  myth  which  conveys  the  truth  that  human  beings  all  have  and  do  turn  away  from  God   and  are  sinners.

See: this is perhaps the key reason I think that maybe the folks at BioLogos didn't read this paper very carefully: Tim Keller believes that Adam was a real guy, the first man after which the race was named.

And his concern here is for exactly the right reasons: he fears that discounting the historicity of Adam will impact our belief in the trustworthiness of Scripture. He fears that the problem of sin and the solution of salvation in Christ will be ruined into mythology and not real and present facts of human existence.

Isn't that a bizarre thing to say after answering as he did his Q#1? Why lay the groundwork for the antithesis of a belief in a historical Adam if in fact you see Adam and his sin as the lynch pin of the theology of human fallenness and a need for a savior?

But that objection aside regarding Q1 and Q2, Pastor Keller is exactly right in his answer to Q3 -- and in that, the curators of BioLogos need to think hard about the solution to the problem he is posing. Tim Keller is not posing the same problem they are -- because he doesn't see Gen 2-3 as myth but as "high history". So the solution He is posing does not work for the problem BioLogos is posing.

Now: to overcome all the baggage Keller has essentially stipulated to in Q1 and Q2, he resorts to the theological hypotheses of Derek Kidner to reconcile evolution to the fall of Adam. But does this actually buy either of them more credibility in the world of process evolution advocates? In Kidner's view, Adam was taken from among the "tool users" who has evolved and given the gift of imago Dei, and then God uses special creation to make Eve! That is, God makes Eve from Adam as it says, but Adam was not made from the red clay but from a lesser primate.

I wonder if someone who accepts the biological explanation for evolution will find that more credible than what it actually says in the Bible -- or if any of the BioLogos advocates would buy Kidner/Keller's exegesis here as more compelling than what Al Mohler would have to say about these passages. And in that, I wonder if someone who has accepted Pastor Keller's answers to Q1 and Q2 wouldn't feel somewhat put upon to accept the answer to Q3 -- because the question of God's supernatural power has only been shifted from Day 1 to Day 6.

So what are Pastor Keller's concluding thoughts? He says it plainly: "We  must  interpret  the  book of nature by the book of God." However, he also states plainly "Christians  who  are  seeking  to  correlate  Scripture  and  science must  be  a 'bigger  tent' than either the anti­‐scientific  religionists  or  the  anti-­‐religious  scientists."

If we are serious to do what Tim Keller says to do -- and use Scripture as the governing authority over what we observe in the world, especially when we are talking about the fundamental metaphysicaland ethical conditions man finds himself in -- then the potential solutions he poses here are not really sufficient to meet the task. But the interesting thing is that they are supported by the tribe at BioLogos as somehow compatible with their view of science and religion.

Do you think they read this paper? I don't think they did. But if they did, I think their motives are an interesting case study. We'll talk about that next week. You probably won't wait that long and will unload your conspiracy theories in the comments.

Have at it.

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A Spectacle for our very Eyes to Gaze on

by Frank Turk



I posted this yesterday over at Evangel, and it needed a little second-drafting, but it's a worthy post in its own right. The discussion goes on over there about the BioLogos approach to Genesis, which I think we Pyros are in league against.

However, some have noted that Augustine himself disagrees with the position Dan, Phil and myself would posit on how to read Genesis 1 -- and that position is supposed to justify all who do so. The story goes that denying 7 days in Gen 1 doesn't necessarily lead one down the wide and easy road to hell.

It's an interesting gambit. Let's lay out a couple of things which I think we would agree on with those who are saying such a thing:

1. The full narrative of the anthology which is Scripture is God's explanation of what He intended to explain -- which I think we would also agree is the full message of His intention for all things as manifested in the person and work of jesus Christ.

1a. In that, it's often the case that people miss the forest for the trees -- often in our world where people are very concerned about "exegetical" preaching, one event or even sentence or word is made to be the whole point when it's simply not the case. That may not be criminal, but it is, as Christopher Benson would say, irresponsible.

1b. We have to read what's there, the way it is said.

2. The question of whether Gen 1 is about "days" or "periods" has not yielded a uniform answer in Christian exegetical history, and in the past 2-ish millennia it has not often been the high-sign of apostasy.

Those are absolutely not in question. What is in question is whether or not one can read Genesis in contradiction to the balance of Scripture.

This is perhaps the most vexing part of this discussion for me -- because it seems to me that the other side of this discussion believes you can read Genesis in contradiction to the rest of the Bible without any harm to the Bible as a whole, its authority in general and in particular, and certainly not to the Gospel.

I disagree strongly -- with Augustine as the primary example. A third point of agreement we all ought to nod our heads to is that nobody reading this post believes everything Augustine believed. For example, Augusting in the self-same Genesis commentary which is being presented as rational and compliant with a BioLogos view, did not believe that light could be present prior to the Sun. There's simply not one person reading this in English today who believes that because, in this case, we agree that the Sun is not hardly the only way to produce light even in our corner of the universe. After that, we could run all the way down the rabbit hole and discuss Augustine on the Eucharist or on God's sovereignty in salvation -- and the whole thread would be a shambles and the point lost.

But the point that no one reading this post agrees with Augustine completely has to be a matter of deeper consideration for those who want to use him to champion or in some way rationalize the BioLogos view. See: for Augustine, the question was not whether God created in 7 days or in 7 billion years. His primary purpose was refutation of Manichaeism in the doctrine of creation. And his own theory was, well, let's read it in his own words from Book 1, end of 7.28:

So then perhaps is said and there was made evening and there was made morning, one day in the sort of way in which one foresees that something can or ought to be done, and not in the way which is actually done is a certain stretch of time. After all, it was in its essential nature that God’s creative work was observed in the Holy Spirit by the author who said, The one who abides for ever created all things simultaneously (Sir 18:1). But in this book of Genesis the story of things made by God most appropriately sets them out as it were through intervals of time; by this arrangement of the account in an orderly sequence, the divine plan itself, which cannot be directly and timelessly contemplated by our weaker intellects, is presented so to say as a spectacle for our very eyes to gaze on.

Let’s please admit that by no means would BioLogos consent to affirming an ex nihilo creation which doesn’t happen over 7 days but in a mere instant where everything is made whole. And moreover, I am sure none of the advocates of this use of Augustine admit that Sirach is Scripture from which to draw that conclusion.

Let me say frankly that if I have to choose between BioLogos' contrary reading of Genesis and Augustine's, I'd choose the Bishop of Hippo's reasoning without hesitation because it does something the BioLogos reading refuses to do: it admits the supernatural and pre-eminent nature of God's creative act.

For all that we might agree on, we have to get after the core issue here which is the modernist and post-modernist alleged debunking or deconstructing of God. To put Augustine in their camp as if he believed in a nearly-eternal period of creation, advanced by inches and chance, is simply an abuse of Augustine far worse than the accusations of (our) abuse of Genesis.

I think the approach that somehow the church fathers' orthodoxy looks more like the "faith" of the BioLogos community is an unproven assertion at best -- and is probably more like an ill-considered gambit when early church orthodoxy produced the Nicean and Athanasian Creeds, and Biologos could never do such a thing.

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Socinianism in Lab Coats

by Phil Johnson

Scripture has been the first casualty of BioLogos's efforts to "reconcile" science and Christianity. Precisely what kind of Christianity are they selling? And how much more are they willing to sell out to scientism?



et me say this as emphatically as possible: My main objection to the BioLogos agenda is theological, not scientific.

Evidently I need to underscore that point, because every time the subject comes up here, our comment-threads swarm with zealots who are keen to debate about geology, paleontology, astronomy, the fossil record, the age of the earth, or whatever—as if my criticisms of BioLogos were scientific rather than biblical and doctrinal. To date, not one person who supports the BioLogos agenda has even acknowledged (much less replied to) the real point we've been making.

So I'll say this once more: What concerns me most about BioLogos is not merely the enthusiasm with which they champion theistic evolution (bad as that is). I haven't complained about their baffling opposition to the simple, obvious teleological arguments of the "intelligent design" community. And what spurred my objections to their campaign has nothing to do with the old-earth/young-earth conflict per se.

But my greatest concern—by far—is the blithe willingness with which they are prepared to trivialize, disregard, discard, or denounce the foundational doctrines of Christianity.

In every post I have made about BioLogos, I've been critical of two things in particular: 1) their relentless assault against the authority of Scripture, and 2) an attitude toward the doctrine of original sin that ranges from utter indifference to condescending dismissal.

The authority of Scripture and the doctrine of original sin are, of course, bedrock truths of all historic Christianity; they are not merely Reformed or evangelical distinctives. (Nor are they trifling "exegetical molehill[s]," as Peter Enns suggested in his reply to Al Mohler.)

The serious doctrinal problems raised by the BioLogos campaign don't end with those two issues, either. As I pointed out in an earlier post, if the BioLogos team applied their Genesis hermeneutic consistently to the gospel accounts and the resurrection narratives, they would soon relinquish every essential element of the Christian faith.

Of course, they haven't gone there. I don't expect they will. Demythologizing Scripture to that degree would utterly discredit them among whatever constituency they have cultivated on the "faith" side of the science/faith divide. But issues like those certainly deserve more attention (and more input from truly conservative theologians) than BioLogos has yet allocated space for.

Incidentally, BioLogos's notion of "leading evangelical theologians" is revealing. Their theological headliners are men like Peter Enns, Greg Boyd, and N. T. Wright, not one of whom is truly evangelical in the historic sense of that term. Enns was dismissed from Westminster Seminary in August 2008 for his low view of Scripture. He and most of his supporters protested at the time that his views had been misrepresented and that he had been treated unfairly. But his contributions to BioLogos furnish ample proof that he did not, in fact, agree with Westminster's doctrinal standards. Boyd, of course, is well known as a cheerleader for Open Theism, which denies both the true omniscience and the immutability (not to mention the sovereignty) of God.

Having blended a low view of Scripture with an implicit denial of original sin, with a humanized view of God, and with a skeptical stance toward the miraculous elements of Scripture, BioLogos is actually peddling a brand of religion that has much more in common with Socinianism than with biblical and historic Christianity.

Some of the scientific specialists at BioLogos make no profession of faith at all, as far as I can determine. I'm thinking, for one, about "Francisco Ayala, the former Dominican priest who went on to become one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists." I wonder: did he leave the priesthood because he lost his "faith" completely? According to the New York Times, "Dr. Ayala will not say whether he remains a religious believer."

“I don’t want to be tagged,” he said. “By one side or the other.”

Let's face it: statements of faith aren't really a BioLogos "thing." The organization has no formal doctrinal standard and (as far as I can tell) no real theological boundaries at all. Everything is negotiable. Scripture is rarely if ever defended. Evangelical truth is not proclaimed at BioLogos. What does get aggressive promotion and a vigorous defense is anything that undermines a high view of Scripture. And why not? Open Theism, Sadduceeism, and neoorthodox notions about inspiration and inerrancy are rooted in the same kind of skepticism that underlies BioLogos's treatment of the early chapters of Genesis.

Here is the closest thing to an official statement of faith you'll find on the BioLogos website: "We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God." Really? Perhaps if we posit an infinitely flexible definition of the word inspired, a claim like that might have a some thin thread of credibility. But search and see for yourself: BioLogos's website is full of articles attacking the accuracy, believability, authority, and verbal inspiration of Scripture. I can't find a single article where any of the contested claims of Scripture are defended against the attacks of secular materialists.

But here is what "faith" really looks like in practice at BioLogos: "I have no interest in preserving Christianity . . . I believe because, as I understand it, it makes sense of human experience. But if it turns out that Christianity fails to do that, I’ll simply turn elsewhere"—Kenton Sparks, BioLogos blogger.

BioLogos says their goal is to integrate the findings of science with Christian Faith. But let's face it: on the "faith" side of the chasm, BioLogos is almost entirely bankrupt. Whatever BioLogos is peddling, it isn't Christianity. It isn't faith of any kind. It's scientism masquerading as faith—but lacking in spiritual, philosophical, and intellectual integrity.

To be more precise, it's a sterile hybrid of scientism and Socinianism. That's why the BioLogos crew frankly aren't interested in defending what the church has affirmed for 2000 years. Their real goal is to marginalize key features of Christian belief and biblical truth that scientists have disputed for the past 200 years. On close examination, BioLogos looks very much like a campaign against Christianity, funded by a hefty Templeton grant. In effect, that's precisely what it is.

I'm not suggesting that's the conscious intent of all BioLogos's key participants. While I despise what they are doing, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to motive. Still, whatever their motives, what they are actually doing is destructive to genuine faith and subversive of the authority of Scripture. It is not something that deserves the support of faithful Christians.

And this is the key point: You can't legitimately claim to be trying to reconcile science and the Christian faith if your methodology entails systematically dismantling the very foundations of Christianity.

PS: BioLogos's ambivalence toward original sin is curious, because there's no doctrine in all the Bible that comes replete with more empirical evidence. Not that I recomend the methodology, but if someone wanted to subject a Christian doctrine to scientific analysis, it would be hard to think of a better place to start. To quote Chesterton: Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.

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A Coda on the Week's Discussion

posted by Phil Johnson

An anonymous commenter named David was active in two or three comment-threads this week, taking BioLogos's side against our critique of that organization's skeptical approach to Scripture. His comments so closely followed the BioLogos party line that many of our commenters assumed he was a professing Christian from the BioLogos community. In the end it became clear that David was actually a devoted atheist trolling for controversy. At the end of Monday's thread, Dan Phillips made the following comments. Since lots of our readers never delve into the comments, I wanted to bring these points to the front page. (Dan's original comment inadvertently had two points 4, so I have renumbered the list; and point 7 below is added to Dan's original list from a subsequent comment Dan himself made well down in the morass of yesterday's comment-thread.) My thanks to Dan for these comments. I couldn't watch the discussion as closely as I would have liked, but Dan's closing comments perfectly reflected my own thoughts about Genesis and modernist skepticism. —Phil Johnson

Summing Up
by Dan Phillips



     would hope a few things became apparent to all despite the efforts of a few dedicated individuals to cast as much murk on the issue as possible:

1. The language of Genesis 1 is not problematic. The style is prose, and the words are straightforward. One has the impression of six normal days of creative activity beginning with 1:1. Exodus 20:11 cements that understanding as being the same as Moses', which means that it was God's intent as well.
   
2. Given that Genesis 1 flows right into the rest of the book's sequential narrative, whose genealogies mark it as a tale of millennia and not endless eons, the universe is thousands of years old, not gazillions.
   
3. Evidence is not self-interpreting.
   
4. We have in Genesis the one and only utterly unimpeachable eyewitness account, with its own interpretive keys to assure that we do not miss the meaning. Words mean things; God spoke to be understood by us (Hebrews 1:1-2); great doubts are not obscuring the text taken on its own terms. Possessing the text, we posses what we need for an interpretive grid for the evidence.
   
5. By contrast, the dominant school that has printed up the "I Am the Only Real Scientist" T-shirts for our day is (A) in possession of a tiny fragment of evidence; (B) driven by philosophical and religious pre-commitments which assure misinterpretation of the evidence; and (C) arrogant out of all proportion to reality.
   
6. I hope that the TE/OE compromisers learned a very important truth from the sneering visitors. By your compromise, (A) you are not winning them over, but (B) are signalling to them that they are winning you over. They will simply wait you out, until you continue in your process of jettisoning everything the world hates about you as a Christian.
       After all, if they can get you to toss such a straightforward chapter, the rest should be child's play.
   
   I add this:
   
7. It is instructive that many commenters could not tell David apart from a "Christian" old-earther/evolutionist. The contempt towards the Biblical text, and the fawning, unquestioning faith in (today's dominant, self-proclaimed version of) science were indistinguishable to many.

The lesson goes out to all. Some will admit it, some won't.

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Enough to Get a Feel

by Frank Turk

There's an interesting post about a "long slog through the fifty chapters of Genesis," and it was about what I'd expect from the writer of that blog.

Coupla-three notes on that blog post for you to masticate on today:

• It's ironic that the writer finds Genesis 22 "rich and controversial" and then finds Genesis 45 "one of the most mundane". You would think that the controversy in Gen 22 would spill over a little so that the deliverance there can be seen again in the deliverance evident in Gen 45.
• Why does the writer of Genesis switch between "Jacob" to "Israel" in Gen 45 & 46? Is it really "random" and the linked blogger suggests?
• What convinced Israel that his beloved son Joseph was alive after all the years of mourning, do you think? Does gen 45 tell us at all?

I'm pinched today for time, but I'll be back later to see what you-all think of this stuff.

It will be an interesting community-wide discussion, I am sure. Perhaps we can all get a feel for the meaning of Genesis by the time we're done.

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