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."
The Spiritual leading on how to respond came a lot faster than I had expected, so here is my reply.
First and most importantly, the Old Testament need not be complicated or difficult. There is only One Great Commandment and that is to love God surpassingly above all else:
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. – Matthew 22:35-40
So one might ask how he can he know whether or not he actually is loving God surpassingly above all else. And the answer to that is also quite simple.
When we love someone, we want what he wants.
If a man loves his wife and she wants the bedroom painted blue, he will do his best to see it done. And if he wants fried catfish, she will do her best to master that skill. Likewise between parents and children, lovers, friends and so on.
Indeed, when a person loves another deeply, he can no longer say whether he likes museums because she does or he does – or whether he likes cheeseburgers because she does or he does.
So if we want what God wants it is because we love Him.
That would entail wanting all of the fruits of the Spirit because He wants them:
But if ye had known what [this] meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. – Matthew 12:7
Blessed [are] the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. – Matthew 5:7
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. – Revelation 21:1-7
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. – Colossians 3:3
To such a one I strongly recommend: begin each day with the Lord’s Prayer – not just speaking it mindlessly by rote, but breaking down each phrase, meditating on what it means – especially the part about hallowing God’s Name.
Truly recognize and honor God as our Father.
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with [him], that we may be also glorified together. – Romans 8:15-17
Consider Who God IS – Who IS hearing our prayer.
Remember the former things of old: for I [am] God, and [there is] none else; [I am] God, and [there is] none like me, - Isaiah 46:9
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. - Revelation 1:7-8
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. – Psalms 91:4
Welcome God’s kingdom, no matter what.
He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. – Revelation 22:20
Truly, if we love someone, we want what he wants. By surrendering our will to His, we are expressing our love for Him and our trust in Him.
He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. – Matt 26:42
We must not ask only physical nourishment, but more importantly, we must ask for spiritual nourishment.
I am that bread of life. – John 6:48
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall [your] heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? – Luke 11:13
We must remember that God’s justice is perfectly balanced and seek His justice. We each individually build the scales whereby we will each be individually weighed.
Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: - Luke 6:37
Blessed [are] the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. – Matt 5:7
And we should ask God to Shepherd us throughout our lives.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. - Psalms 23
Whether one’s Scriptures include this Doxology or not, we should end our prayer to the Father with an exclamation, a “Praise God” or “Selah” or “Amen.”
By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of [our] lips giving thanks to his name. – Hebrews 13:15
I never said he didn't or couldn't. The principle is the same: the initiation of anything (i.e. a start) is incompatible with changelessness. A changeless God, as JCB puts it aptly, would have to be doing noting and everything simultaneously. What evidence do you have that the god of your choice can, and that it is the God of the OT?
To me God is changeless in His nature -- not in his choices of what He does. Or are you so omnipotent as to claim otherwise?
Really? Then you must not believe Jesus is God incarnate, because there was a time when God was not fully human, and now he is.
So, if a deity can change in every way but nature, that still doesn't prevent it from escaping the problem of being under the influence of time. If time is brought in, then the deity is not timeless - implying that it wasn't or cannot be everlasting, in either direction through time. In other words, the deity itself cannot escape the problem of not having its own "first cause", regardless of whether its "nature" is timeless or not (a self-contradicting claim).
Alamo-Girl's photon example was interesting, but it has serious problems that it causes to the property of omniscience, if such a phenomenon is exploited by a deity in order to transcend time. The property that would allow photons to "experience" the non-passage of time due to time dilation also causes the deity to not know the occurrences on Earth, precisely due to the perceived non-passage of time from that frame of reference. The time dilation phenomenon critically relies on the property of light of having the same speed (c) regardless of the frame of reference. So, if no time passes on an observed frame of reference with respect to this deity's frame of reference ("if the photon could be an observer, to it that mountain climber’s entire life is not even a blur..."), then it "sees" nothing happening on that observed frame, thus making everyone in that frame appear as if they were a still photograph. In order to remedy this, at least some time must pass on the frame of reference of the deity, which ultimately brings back the passage of time on that frame, thus pulling the deity out of its "timeless" realm.
All that's merely been done here is the substitution of one paradox with another. You'll need to find better gaps to accommodate such gods.
Read this as: "... at least some time must pass observably (on Earth's frame) from the frame of reference of the deity..."
It seems to me the paradox goes away when one stops making God subject to time.
A human creator creates in time, which is sensed as an irreversible series of moments past, present, to future. The past slips away, the future is not yet, and even the present is not really "present" — for as Alamo-Girl has pointed out, there is a lag time between the original perception and its sensory processing before the processed data can be made available to the mind as a cognition. But because this is the way things work for humans "in time," we cannot say that this "model" pertains to God, Who is not in time.
Plus I want to know in what way is the human changed by his creative act? If I knit a sweater, say, in what way am I "changed?" Sure, I had to work with changes in pattern — alternating knit stitches and purls as the pattern requires. But in what way am I changed by this?
If a human is not so changed, then why would you say that God is changed by His creative act?
I think you are trying to apply "human rules" to God, rules of time to the timeless. No wonder you come up with a "huge paradox!"
You wrote that "Time is a scalar quantity." Again, as my dearest sister Alamo-Girl has pointed out, it certainly was thought to be so by Aristotle. An exercise in simple counting demonstrates his point. But Aristotle has been roundly criticized by persons of Pythagorean persuasion, for not seeing that numbers are not merely a countable series, but also possess individual "magnitude." This observation "opens up" time, from a scalar, linear series of passing moments, to time conceived as a volume. Indeed, it seems to me time has to be "volumetric" in order to accommodate the expression of numerical magnitude.
Just look at the critturs on the number line — some of them point to infinite extension; some are even called transcendental numbers. Like pi, for instance. Now that's what I call "magnitude!" Plus check out the primes and perfects — certainly they have a very special character that is not exhausted by their utility as counting numbers.
As ever, our notions about time constrain what we find in the world of experience and what we can know and say about it. If our understanding is faulty, then our knowledge will be faulty and/or incomplete.... And paradoxes will spring up.
Or so it seems to me. Just some thoughts, FWIW.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights into this problem, James C. Bennett!
Everything people say about God (forgives, loves, cares, wants, regrets, is jealous, etc.) is applying "human rules" to God. Who decides when these rules don't apply?
That which is timeless cannot observe or partake in time; likewise that which is omniscient cannot be omnipotent—i.e. an omniscient deity cannot change its mind, ergo is not omnipotent.
Yes, God has chosen to step inside the bubble as The Word made flesh Who dwelt among us. And yes, even spirits will have some where/when 'arrangement' since they are also created 'things'. So the seeming paradox becomes, God is non-local because He exists outside the bubble of spacetime which He created, but God is also 'all-local' as His Spirit sustains the extremely delicate balance of it all, and as He has chosen to take flesh and dwell among us.
[Shhhh, whatever you do, don't show this to certain geniuses wishing to diminish God rather than exalt God.]
It seems to me you cannot subject God to the Law of the Excluded Middle. That would be to commit a category error.
We are made in His image, not the other way around. The image cannot dictate terms to the "original" of which it is an image.
Try as you might, you cannot reduce God to human categories without grossly misrepresenting the divine nature.
Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
Plus how do you know "for a fact" that "That which is timeless cannot observe or partake in time?" You are unavoidably in time; you cannot step out of it. So how do you know what a timeless Being knows, or does, in what for Him is an eternal Now that you do not sense at all?
Thanks so much for writing, kosta!
Indeed, dear MHGinTN — the creation seems not to have been a "one-shot deal," rather it is a continuous activity, from Alpha to Omega.... That is to say, timeless (i.e., eternal) God works in time.... There's a paradox here from the human standpoint; but it does not apply to God or limit Him in any way. For as you say, He is at once non-local and all-local.
Thank you so very much for your wonderful insights, dear brother in Christ!
But these are not "human rules," strictly speaking. These are self-revelations that God makes to us which are indicative of divine nature or character. They become rules for us in the fact that we are made in God's image, to be sons of God.
kosta, there are times when I wonder whether you think God was created in the image of man. Even in the image of a particular man — that would be you.
You'll get nowhere fast with that presupposition.
JMHO FWIW.
Again, thank you so much for writing!
You seem to have a serious problem with those words, dear allmendream. I wonder why.
So wondering, I thought maybe your problem with "transcendent" and "mystical" is that they refer to things which are not "physical." But all kinds of things in human experience are not "physical." For instance, mathematics and logic, reason, biology as a body of science, the laws of nature, universals of all descriptions, qualia, and so forth.
Evidently you believe there is nothing "transcendent or mystical" about "our" biology. I tend to disagree with you there, for two reasons.
(1), Increasingly scientists have come to recognize that DNA is more than a chemical specification for the construction of proteins, it is
... a tightly woven, highly efficient language that follows extremely specific rules. Its alphabet, grammar and overall structure are ordered by a beautiful set of mathematical functions.In short, DNA is relentlessly nonphysical in this sense. Does this make it metaphysical, or transcendent or mystical in some way? Even if it did, still we have to note that beyond doubt DNA is effective physically, empirically. It is definitely part of the phenomenal world we observe.
(2) To me, life itself is "transcendent" in the sense that its Source is not directly to be found in the field of its physical manifestation. The ancient Greek idea was that all existent things are participations in divine Being. Creatures have no "being," no life in themselves; their mortal life is a temporary participation in the Being of God, Who is Life. Existence is relentless change; Being is utterly changeless....
Of course, the great Greeks are not noted for their overall sensitivity to the time problem.... Perhaps because they were so interested in discovering universals (which are by definition timeless and spaceless).
"Life comes only from life." (I think it was Schröedinger who first posited that observation.) Which tells me that experiments with abiogenesis are likely to continue to disappoint their designers....
You wrote,
My “reductionist view” is that physical phenomena have explainable physical causes. This is the view that has led to all scientific advancement.It seems to me the physical laws do not "cause" things to happen so much as they constrain what kinds of things can happen. Yet in either case, there would be a natural (material or physical) phenomenon produced/modified by a nonphenomenal (non-physical) cause.
Are the latter what you mean by "transcendent" or "mystical?"
Speaking of which: You speak of the physical brain. But I never hear you speak of mind. Of soul you do; but not mind. What gives? Just wondering my friend.
Thank you so much for writing!
[Liar]
You have a nice day, Mr. Bill.
If DNA does something other than code for proteins, and allow for the coding of proteins, there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE for it.
You think a chemical structure is now transcendent and mystical? If you think a chemical structure is transcendent and mystical it would follow that there is little in this world that you do not think is as well.
The physical brain is necessary to explain our brain (or mind if you will) - a defect in the physical brain causes a defect in cognition - because cognition is the product of the operation of our physical mind.
And thus we discover your definition of "mind," at last: In so many words, "mind" is an epiphenomenon of physical brain.
To which I would proffer an alternative understanding: The physical brain causes nothing by itself in the "mind" department. It structures all kinds of autonomic activity in the physical body designed to preserve living function; but it does not itself "think." Rather, it is the "substrate" on which thinking — that is, minds — depends. That is, it is the facilitator of something else, which is "beyond" itself.
JMHO FWIW.
I do not think you have fully engaged the problem of "mind" yet, dear brother.
Hey, I can show you where to look. What I can't do is tell you what to see.
But if I suspected in the least that you were looking along these lines, this would be good enuf for me.
May God ever bless you, dear brother!
Well I'm not so sure about all that.
For one thing, there are no "gaps." The reason for that being: The Creator is not merely imaginary. He is omniscient and omnipotent. By our observation, He HAD to be thus, to have made the world we see all around us as parts and participants thereof. :^)
You are on record as saying that all views of God are opinions only. You even suggest that persons holding such opinions are morons.
Further, you rule out testimony as having any evidentiary value whatsoever.
Great. The position your line of thinking lands us in would seem to go something like this:
Aletheia logos must succumb, must give "right of way," to doxa."Aletheia logos" refers to a truthful, sworn statement — a "testimony" in the legal sense, and more. "Doxa" refers to whatever opinion commands public support at a given time. And times are ever a-changing....
You live on a slippery slope, my friend. I hope you will soon find your "legs."
And when he had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the *Holy Spirit.
23. "If you forgive the the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
betty boop: It seems to me you cannot subject God to the Law of the Excluded Middle. That would be to commit a category error.
I think you are confusing the fallacy of false dichotomy or false dilemma with the valid logical excluded middle argument. Be it as it is, the latter would be "if you don't believe in God then you must be a socialist" (you see a lot of that false dichotomy here of FR).
On the other hand, that which partakes in time is not timeless is not a logical fallacy any more than saying that which dies is not immortal. And if you are omniscient then you know what all your choices will be and can't change them, therefore you are not omnipotent.
Besides, why can't I subject God to logic given that you seem to subject him to your own definitions, such as that he is omnipotent, omniscient, timeless, the first cause, etc.? Or, given that God is described as loving, caring, jealous, etc. If he is subject to human emotions and passions then he should be subject to human logic as well. You can't have it both ways.
We are made in His image, not the other way around. The image cannot dictate terms to the "original" of which it is an image.
Talk about forced conclusions! Who says we are made in his image? What proof do you have to offer? So, your conclusion that an "image cannot dictate terms to the 'original' of which it is an image", while logically true, is not a true conclusion because the truth of the statement on which it rests is without any proof. It would be a valid conclusion provided the assumption about us being in God's image were positively true rather than "true by fiat".
Besides, it's not just the image, but also in likeness of God, which is another problem. Are any of us God-like? Who is willing to raise the hand first on this one?
Try as you might, you cannot reduce God to human categories without grossly misrepresenting the divine nature
Anyone who says anything about God reduces him to human categories (or are you going to deny that too?). Why is it some can and I can't? How can believers say God exists when they insists he "existed" before existence existed?
Plus how do you know "for a fact" that "That which is timeless cannot observe or partake in time?" You are unavoidably in time; you cannot step out of it. So how do you know what a timeless Being knows, or does, in what for Him is an eternal Now that you do not sense at all?
Because then such a "being" would not be timeless, would it be? You used the (superficially) compelling argument with knitting the sweater. It doesn't change the knitter, so why should it change God to create. The answer, of course, is because God is said not only to have knitted a sweater but actually became one!
Really? Then so are mine. :)
They become rules for us in the fact that we are made in God's image, to be sons of God
I presume that's another "revelation" sadly lacking in any objective proof.
kosta, there are times when I wonder whether you think God was created in the image of man.
If there is a God (and I don't know if there is or not), whatever he may be, I doubt he is in the image of man. But the "god of the gaps", the god of human religions, appears to have a striking resemblance of man's idealized image of himself.
You'll get nowhere fast with that presupposition
Another "revelation" I suppose?
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