Posted on 01/16/2011 4:09:10 PM PST by balch3
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- A Southern Baptist seminary president and evolution opponent has turned sights on "theistic evolution," the idea that evolutionary forces are somehow guided by God. Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an article in the Winter 2011 issue of the seminary magazine labeling attempts by Christians to accommodate Darwinism "a biblical and theological disaster."
Mohler said being able to find middle ground between a young-earth creationism that believes God created the world in six 24-hour days and naturalism that regards evolution the product of random chance "would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict."
The problem, however, is that it is not evolutionary theory that gives way, but rather the Bible and Christian theology.
Mohler said acceptance of evolutionary theory requires reading the first two chapters of Genesis as a literary rendering and not historical fact, but it doesn't end there. It also requires rethinking the claim that sin and death entered the human race through the Fall of Adam. That in turn, Mohler contended, raises questions about New Testament passages like First Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
"The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible's account of creation," Mohler wrote. "If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms."
Mohler said that after trying to reconcile their reading of Genesis with science, proponents of theistic evolution are now publicly rejecting biblical inerrancy, the doctrine that the Bible is totally free from error.
"We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and Gospel integrity are at stake," Mohler concluded. "Are you ready for this debate?"
In a separate article in the same issue, Gregory Wills, professor of church history at Southern Seminary, said attempts to affirm both creation and evolution in the 19th and 20th century produced Christian liberalism, which attracted large numbers of Americans, including the clerical and academic leadership of most denominations.
After establishing the concept that Genesis is true from a religious but not a historical standpoint, Wills said, liberalism went on to apply naturalistic criteria to accounts of miracles and prophecy as well. The result, he says, was a Bible "with little functional authority."
"Liberalism in America began with the rejection of the Bible's creation account," Wills wrote. "It culminated with a broad rejection of the beliefs of historic Christianity. Yet many Christians today wish to repeat the experiment. We should not expect different results."
Mohler, who in the last year became involved in public debate about evolution with the BioLogos Foundation, a conservative evangelical group that promotes integrating faith and science, has long maintained the most natural reading of the Bible is that God created the world in six 24-hour days just a few thousand years ago.
Writing in Time magazine in 2005, Mohler rejected the idea of human "descent."
"Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species," he wrote. "Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker."
Surrender to what? A fairytale?
Muslims make the same excuse for Allah's ways, too.
I'm sorry to have to convey this, Kosta, but the genius needed to fabricate an entire New Testament of multiple documents and letters so as to fit neatly into a huge deceit with a singular purpose is more fanciful than your accusation that John made the scene up! Your theory would require an angelic genius. Your efforts to dance around even opening your mind to 'a gospel' is astonishing, though no longer amusing.
James, youn didn't really expect to get an answer, did you? Although they claim they "know" the mind of God, when asked why God did something they tell you "for his desired Holy direction" which, translated into plain English, reads just because.
"Jesus answered and said to him, `Verily, verily, I say to thee, If any one may not be born from above, he is not able to see the reign of God;"
Excuse?
It was an explanation. You wanted to know why the David/Bath baby died and why the Amalekites were slain.
I said because God decided it was best.
How is that an excuse? An excuse would be, “He was driving down the road, didn’t see them, and damned if He didn’t run right over top of them.”
An excuse is an effort to shift the direction of responsibility.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Ah, John had an 'agenda', now I do not care who you are that is funny. I can so totally understand why the WORDS John penned give the bible scholars 'big time' trouble. But hey as it is Written there is nothing new under the sun, what has been will be again... and 'big bang' just flows out like it is news.
Oh, I do agree that busy fingers put in the word 'again' but it is NOT correct.... John's agenda is so stated in John 1:1 from the beginning Genesis 1:1.
Muslims say they need to kill / oppress the infidels because God commands them to do it. The real reason could be anything, including territorial acquisition. How is this not valid in the Amalekite case?
How is what not valid? That they killed Amalekites just to take their land.
All of those people ran around taking each others lands. Do you suppose they needed an excuse to keep their names out of the non-existent headlines at the non-exitent United Nations?
There isn't one. It's a clear moral contradiction that cannot be resolved.
Including the infants? The cattle? The donkeys too? All were killed, without mercy or justice, by the hands of men.
You ever read about the Assyrians?
Yep, these cultures were into killing everything that moved when it served their purposes.
The Jews didn’t have public image problems to worry about.
How is this any more repugnant than the slaughter of innocent children and infants?
It is a recommendation for you and anyone else following.
On some nice and quiet day, grab your favorite beverage and snacks, find the most comfortable chair in your house and just read the Gospel of John again, casually not studying it. Read it like a love letter from One who loves you more deeply than you can ever know.
God's Name is I AM.
Although I cannot speak for many of the posters here, whose view of Christianity is far from the mainstream...
Christians do not (if they know their Bible) claim to know the mind of God.
Isaiah 55:8
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
“justice”
Implies a standard. What standard?
Hebrew was not a spoken language of Palestine in the 1st century, any more than KJV English is today a spoken language. Nevertheless, the same impossibility of a pun, or Nicodemus' misunderstanding, applies to Hebrew.
In order for him to misunderstand "form above" as (remotely meaning) "again" would have required them to converse in sophistated Greek.
form=from
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