Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Mohler takes on 'theistic evolution'
Associated Baptist Press ^ | January 13, 2011 | Bob Allen

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."


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: asa; baptist; biologos; creation; darwinism; edwardbdavis; evochristianity; evolution; gagdadbob; mohler; onecosmos; southernbaptist; teddavis; theisticevolution
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 661-680681-700701-720 ... 1,721-1,733 next last
To: betty boop
A person cannot have "facts" without acknowledging some ground by which such purported "facts" can be "validated." This is the fly in their ointment....

Precisely so!

681 posted on 01/21/2011 10:14:55 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 614 | View Replies]

To: betty boop; Alamo-Girl

Very interesting insight there Betty B. Your one, two, three loop says it well...and I think many people today are their own measure of reality, much of which are the imaginations of their mind.

Good post...enjoyed as always. Same with Alamo Girl’s. Always love the reads....though much goes over my head when you get to deep! HA! You both s-t-r-e-t-c-h ones mind til it hurts! But it’s a good hurt.


682 posted on 01/21/2011 10:15:53 PM PST by caww
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 581 | View Replies]

To: xzins
Beautifully said, dear brother in Christ!
683 posted on 01/21/2011 10:17:25 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 620 | View Replies]

To: caww; betty boop
I enjoy betty boop's posts so much I save them up for my last read of the session at the computer, so I can grab a cup of hot chocolate, lean back and savor her far reaching insights.

But when I'm done and wanting to reply I often find myself frustrated because her posts are so thorough there's nothing to add - just something that bears repeating. LOLOL!

Thank you so much for your encouragements, dear caww!

684 posted on 01/21/2011 10:25:37 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 682 | View Replies]

To: D-fendr; betty boop; MHGinTN; caww
In several discussions with atheists on the forum, it has become apparent to me that they do have a "god" and that "god" is physical causation.

They put absolute faith in it without really thinking it through.

Which is to say that physical causation requires both space and time because in the absence of space, things cannot exist and in the absence of time, events cannot occur. And that is a poison pill because the CMB measurements from the 1960s forward affirm that the universe is expanding which means that there was a beginning of real space and real time and that space/time does not pre-exist but is created as the universe expands.

Willful blindness perhaps?

685 posted on 01/21/2011 10:33:59 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 635 | View Replies]

To: D-fendr
What is something to think about is that Aquinas,unlike Pascal, for instance, was not distracted by the immensity of space, or the smallness of ultimate things. He could focus on the merely human and the divine, knowing that the former could approach the latter only asymtophically.
Between the two an unbridgeable space, except in the Sacrament.
686 posted on 01/21/2011 10:38:18 PM PST by RobbyS (Pray with the suffering souls.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 676 | View Replies]

To: Alamo-Girl

Near-sightedness, really. They think in terms of probability. The DNA says that the person I know to be my mother is 99.*% certain. Their best measurements prevent them from knowing truth.


687 posted on 01/21/2011 10:42:20 PM PST by RobbyS (Pray with the suffering souls.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 685 | View Replies]

To: BrandtMichaels
Jewish apostates, ha! Kettle calling the pot black.

Could you not have made it more apparent what believers are expected to do? that you may do it ~ that is, preach the word of faith.

Read verses 12-14 again.

688 posted on 01/21/2011 10:44:16 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 667 | View Replies]

To: Alamo-Girl
That no physical cosmology (big bang/inflationary model, cyclic, imaginary time, multi-verse, ekpyrotic, etc.) can explain the beginning of real time

Just curious...but doesn't memory also have to do with time? ......point A. to B. and most measurable things require the memory to discern time.

689 posted on 01/21/2011 10:44:42 PM PST by caww
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 479 | View Replies]

To: MHGinTN
Insult? What would you say if I called your posts “grotesque”, as the other poster does, or if I called you “contrarian”?
690 posted on 01/21/2011 10:47:03 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 669 | View Replies]

To: James C. Bennett; BrandtMichaels
You throw a person out of "worship services" for no possible fault of his or hers, and then expect the same person to attain salvation. What then is the use of the said "worship services" or even the congregation if salvation can be attained outside of it? What use are congregations, or churches, even, in that case?

What use is the prayer for the sick...if you are already "saved"? Why go through the motions and not just let God's "will be done"?

691 posted on 01/21/2011 10:51:06 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 672 | View Replies]

To: kosta50

Isn’t it amazing how a weak case is first made for a deity, and then fantastically self-contradictory bridges are built around that case to their deity of choice? All the while keeping the paradox of their “unchanging” deity causing spectacular change at a finite moment, unresolved.

As was said earlier, it’s theology of the fringes, and with that, we’re full-circle back to where this whole debate began.


692 posted on 01/21/2011 10:57:21 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 690 | View Replies]

To: D-fendr; James C. Bennett
That's what philosophers and scientists engage in continually. Until they come up with something that explains or solves the equation. And they duel with equations, looking for errors in others and their own, leading to new out-of-balance or unexplained observations, and the process continues. It's how the fields of inquiry work, a major part of the process

Sure, I agree. However scientists don;t know what's ahead, so they keep searching. The people of faith have the answers supposedly revealed to them. They "know" God, they have the "mind of Chest". They are lead by the Holy Spirit; they know they are "saved" and destined to heaven. What further purpose could be behind their inquiry?

693 posted on 01/21/2011 10:58:39 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 673 | View Replies]

To: James C. Bennett; MHGinTN
Such a god will know the reason for his non-belief, as well. If not, that god isn't a real god

I love when they resort to scary tactics...like it's safer to believe so I will make sure I believe, just in case...

694 posted on 01/21/2011 11:04:52 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 675 | View Replies]

To: D-fendr; James C. Bennett

Chest=Christ


695 posted on 01/21/2011 11:11:16 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 693 | View Replies]

To: kosta50

What, in your mind is faith? and also belief?


696 posted on 01/21/2011 11:15:31 PM PST by caww
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 588 | View Replies]

To: RobbyS
Australopithocine was an extraterrestrial?

Come on! What are the chances that two independent lines of life would form genetic DNA that is 98% the same?

There is a great deal of evidence of our ancestors from the last few million years.

There are only two explanations for why we and chimps are so similar, related by DNA changes that would correlate to us having a recent common ancestor some six to seven million years ago, and lo and behold three million years ago we find a very human like bipedal ape.

Just coincidence?

How would you explain the similar pattern of ERV insertions shared between humans and chimps, more similar between those two than chimps and gorillas.

Do you think chimps and gorillas shared a common ancestor? Or were they too extraterrestrials?

697 posted on 01/21/2011 11:18:49 PM PST by allmendream (Tea Party did not send the GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 656 | View Replies]

To: James C. Bennett
Isn’t it amazing how a weak case is first made for a deity, and then fantastically self-contradictory bridges are built around that case to their deity of choice? All the while keeping the paradox of their “unchanging” deity causing spectacular change at a finite moment, unresolved

I just want to know what was God doing when he wasn't creating. I doubt I will get an answer.

698 posted on 01/21/2011 11:21:02 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 692 | View Replies]

To: caww
What, in your mind is faith? and also belief?

Faith is trust. Belief is an assumption.

699 posted on 01/21/2011 11:23:23 PM PST by kosta50 ("Spirit of Spirit...give me over to immortal birth so that I may be born again" -- Mithral prayer)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 696 | View Replies]

To: kosta50

The moment something changes what it was doing (or not doing) is the moment it ceases being changeless, and therefore ceases being timeless.

The moment of creation is such a moment. For the creator and the created. This is the unresolved paradox.


700 posted on 01/21/2011 11:32:04 PM PST by James C. Bennett (An Australian.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 698 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 661-680681-700701-720 ... 1,721-1,733 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson