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."
Surely you aren’t suggesting that turtles have souls now, are you? That tiny difference matters.
Your example, on the other hand, proves the links and flaws that the mode of human reproduction shares with the animal kingdom, and those same flaws transfer onto “souls” too, if they could exist.
That God's plan intends the human spirit to be imbued with His level of life via His Holy Spirit does not come up short as a plan just because He has given the human spirit free choice to become alive or remain dead. In the Book of Jeremiah there are interesting passages which address 'the rod of God' / the measuring rod of God. God has a way to gage every human soul. We are also told that He rewards those who dilligently seek Him.
Because you choose to not believe there is a spirit in every man and focus purely on that which can be found in everything that is alive, you cannot see or discern with 'spiritual eyes'. But I have seen with my own eyes what happens when a man or woman decides to believe God IS and IS a rewarder of those who dilligently seek him. The 'Hound of Hedaven' is relentless. If you choose to believe, He will do the rest! If you choose to believe, you will not then have a lifetime spent trying to verify what you have chosen to believe, for His Spirit makes alive the human spirit and a universe you did not imagine also comes alive to you. ... And THAT universe has a very different where/when which is real, already exists, and is open to all who will ...
Which was my point. Your chosen model of "salvation" works only for those who can, leaving out those who can't. Do each of the parasitic twins that comprise of mere arms or legs have a "soul" and "spirit" too? Can they choose as well? Or are they the discarded by-product "remnants" of the "soul-spirit" creation process, flawed as it is?
The problem with your assumption is that it requires you to pre-suppose that all individuals have the ability to make choices. Parasitic twins don't, however, because an arm or a leg growing out of another person cannot think, or choose.
How does your deity cover the salvation of such unfortunate beings? Remember, only those that believeth, "receiveth".
Typical of the materialist, you are obsessed with talking donkeys and snakes, etc. They, after all, are the very essence of Biblical instruction. If one cannot believe in (or even merely understand the mechanics of) talking donkeys and snakes, then one has no need to heed or understand the injunction to adore God, to love thy neighbor as thyself, to murmur not at the ways of Providence, to honor one’s mother and father, or to heed and understand all the other lessons of Biblical instruction. Those donkeys and snakes are simply too much. Makes everything else irrelevant and safe to ignore.
“I do know only here and now. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is a maybe.”
Said the grasshopper to the ant. You therefore have no house insurance, I assume (if you own it free and clear)? Nor a pension plan? Nor health insurance (0bama will not be pleased)? Nor a raincoat? Nor garbage pickup?
Ah, the liberation of life’s uncertainties.
My deity? LOL, you have no idea where or when God measures the spirit, nor can I answer definitively, so you have a nice evening. Perhaps your buddy Kosta whom you seem determined to bring into this discussion will stroke your ego a bit. I haven’t the patience for you any more than I would give Dawkins the time of day when he’s being purposely deceitful, like with the giraffe neck and vegus nerve example.
“Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence.”
Mencius VII.A.4, 372 – 289 BC, China.
“One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish desire.”
- Anusasana Parva 113.8
“This is the sum of duty: do naught to others which if done to thee would cause thee pain.”
- The Mahabharata.
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/english2/handouts/goldenrule.pdf
Thank you so very much, James C. Bennett, for so helpfully laying out the problem of God as you see it.
For all that I'm a name on the ping list of persons who couldn't possibly have anything to say in response to the points you raise, I'll be very happy to take up your points one by one.
For openers: "There is no way anyone can believe in a deity unless he or she has heard of it from another human (with the exception of direct divine intervention, perhaps)." But I do not believe, on the basis of observation, evidence, and experience, that God is known only by means of human testimony. Indeed, even you left a "back door" escape hatch for that supposition, "divine intervention."
But what do you mean by "divine intervention?" Just asking, because that has indeed been part of my own direct experience of God. God gives visions to some. To others He gives the sense of His abiding Presence. In my case, I have been blessed along both these lines.... So for me, God is NOT an "hypothesis." He is REAL; He is THERE. And in some sense is in every where and every when.
So naturally, I entirely dispute your finding that knowledge of God is transmitted only man to man, as captured in ancient writings. And that somehow this constitutes a "flaw" in God's plan of salvation.
Which serves the purpose of delegitimating God; for how could God's plan of salvation be "flawed?" If it is, the flaw must be willed by God. And what sort of just and good Supreme Being would will such a flawed situation?
But the flaw isn't in the situation. It's in the way human minds grasp and analyze the situation.
God's self-revelation to us is not a human testimony. Also it is not fully captured in ancient writings. For God gave us four revelations: The ancient writings (the Holy Scriptures, His Word to us in human language); the "Book of Nature," or the Creation itself (which manifests His creative order); the Incarnation of His Holy Word, Jesus Christ (the most world-transforming event in human history); and the Grace of His Holy Spirit abiding with us.
That is, abiding with persons whose souls are open to God. Those who close their souls to God will not, of course, be in any position to evaluate the truth of any of the four divine revelations.
Or so it seems to me. JMHO FWIW.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and concerns, James C. Bennett!
WATCH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMyobzReF9w
So when does a parasitic twin have a "soul" and a "spirit"? When it is just a head? Just a torso? Just an arm?
P.S: I ping Kosta on all my replies here because it keeps him updated on the thread of the conversation. Otherwise we tend to get replies from various sections of what is a very long discussion. No ego stroking here, as your accusation implies. You may have stroked your own with that preconception, however, and I wouldn't be surprised. After all, the "saved" are superior, aren't they?
Nonsense. A deity is a person. Additionally, the fact a person existed is not wiped out by their death.
Jesus was a person that showed up in the flesh and claimed to be God. The 4 Gospels contain quotes of Jesus, which can be examined and compared to other things said about Him and His Person. those quotes were written down by folks that knew Him in person.
"What good does it do, if a man's faith in a deity can only come after he has faith in the words of his fellow men?"
The quotes given in the 4 Gospels do not require the reader to have faith in the writers to know the person quoted, understand them and examine what's said for logical consistency.
"It would have been so much simpler for a deity to merely telepathically communicate with all humanity the way it supposedly did with certain "prophets" and such a mode wouldn't have lead humanity to rely on other humans and scraps of ancient writings, for its "salvation"."
Moses said, God gave Him the divorce laws to give to the people. God said, Moses gave them to the people, because their hearts were hard.
Re: The parasitic twin.
God said that the importance of such occurrences were to have the parents and others decide and comment on the matter. God said, that out of stones He could raise children of Abraham and He did. If the parents consider the parasitic twin their child, it will live. If they don't, God will likely judge them to be stones and keep the child. It's the same with the stone age person. God knows their heart. What He's looking for is the ones that claim to know Him and who testify about Him to expose themselves as fakes.
Such was covered in John 9. John 9 even illustrates where the "doctrine" of original sin comes from and what God thinks of it.
"But what do you mean by "divine intervention?" Just asking, because that has indeed been part of my own direct experience of God. God gives visions to some. To others He gives the sense of His abiding Presence. In my case, I have been blessed along both these lines.... So for me, God is NOT an "hypothesis." He is REAL; He is THERE. And in some sense is in every where and every when.
So naturally, I entirely dispute your finding that knowledge of God is transmitted only man to man, as captured in ancient writings. And that somehow this constitutes a "flaw" in God's plan of salvation.
Which serves the purpose of delegitimating God; for how could God's plan of salvation be "flawed?" If it is, the flaw must be willed by God. And what sort of just and good Supreme Being would will such a flawed situation?
But the flaw isn't in the situation. It's in the way human minds grasp and analyze the situation."
How do you apply this to parasitic twins? Some of them are merely arms hanging out of another person, while others have functioning brains and mouths.
To which YHAOS replied: Said the grasshopper to the ant.
LOLOL dear YHAOS! I was raised on Aesop's Fables! They were among the first books read to me as a child, and the first I read for myself (at age 3, if my mother is to be believed).
The moral of the story of the grasshopper and the ant is that the grasshopper did not fare very well, when "winter" came.... :^) He, unlike the ants, had not taken certain responsibilities to heart; and so he suffered grievously for his failure in due course.
Thank you so much for your wonderful insights, dear YHAOS!
Where does free choice fit into this?
What about parasitic twins that are spontaneously re-absorbed into the body of the carrier? What about those that are born internally, but non-functional? What modes of "salvation" are available to them? And how do you accommodate free choice into their "salvation plan"?
By direct divine intervention, I meant one soul witnessing its supposed “creator” directly, without ambiguity, so that it could believe in it, and not through mere testimonies of other flawed men.
Umm, no. One needs to have faith in the humans who recorded the events in order to accept the records as true. Don't forget the Old Testament, either.
To believe in the message of a deity conveyed by any prophet, prior faith in the prophet is a precondition.
snip: There is no way anyone can believe in a deity unless he or she has heard of it from another human...
Spirited: This argument rests on the assumption that man has it within his power to imagine (create) that which he has never before experienced in any way. If this claim is true, then all readers of this post should find it a simple exercise to immediately imagine a never-before-seen 4th primary color. Given that we already have experience of the other three, this feat should be easy.
All who try however, will immediately discover that though they can speculate on the existence of a 4th primary color, they cannot in any way “see” it.
As CS Lewis correctly noted, before man can imagine something he must have prior knowledge of it from a source (or sources) external to himself.
This being the case, before ancient men could imagine a god or gods, spirits and demons (and even a hellish underworld) and then hand this knowledge down through generations, someone had to “experience them” first hand.
The answer to James argument was supplied by him as well: (with the exception of direct divine intervention, perhaps).
There is no flaw in God’s design for salvation James. The fatal error is-—as always-—misplaced “faith” in mankind...”Ye can be as God.”
Sounds about right to me, James C. Bennett! I'll be glad to accept this definition of "direct divine intervention", for the record!
Now what???
Here's a testimony from a "flawed man" — a person like you or me, only "more so" — who had such an overwhelming sense of the direct presence of God in his life over an extended period of time that he said this:
O Lord, you are not only that than which a greater cannot be conceived, but you are also greater than what can be conceived. — Anselm of Cantebury, Saint and Doctor of the Church, in ProslogionAnd so Anselm fervently prays to God:
Speak to my desirous soul what you are, other than what it has seen, that it may clearly see what it desires. — Ibid.I don't see any pink unicorns, talking donkeys or snakes involved in any of this.
Nor was Anselm setting himself up as a "prophet," to instruct other men in proper belief. Rather, these statements testify to a direct encounter between himself and God at an extraordinarily intimate, private level, over an extended period of time.
So it seems to me, such things as "direct divine intervention" in human minds and souls do happen....
I dunno.... Maybe you really wish such things would happen to you.
If that's the case, it's easy: All you have to do is to maintain a clean and well-swept "accommodation" in your heart for the Holy Spirit, for whenever He decides to come abide with you. And then don't worry too much about the timing of His visit.
If you are prepared to receive Him, He will not fail to come.
Thank you so much for writing, dear James C. Bennett!
You'll have to re-read the prior post. The choice is made by those who are capable of doing so. If one can not make a choice, because they lack the machinery that provides for the rational functions of mind, they obviously can not be condemned.
"What about parasitic twins that are spontaneously re-absorbed into the body of the carrier?"
It all depends on those that can make decisions. They are the ones to be judged.
CS Lewis is just flat wrong.
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