From Esther to Evolution (Should I speak up for biblical truth & risk being called Fundamentalist?)

One of the Bible's great statements about courage comes in chapter 5 of Esther. The Jewish queen of Persia has told Uncle Mordecai that she can't go before the king: If she does, she'll probably die.

Mordecai responds with admonition—you won't escape by hiding—and then a line that has sent chills down my spine: "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"

In every generation moments of truth arise. Esther, early Christian martyrs, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and many more throughout the centuries have faced life-or-death decisions.

In this land of liberty our task is easier: We have reputational decisions. Should I speak up for biblical truth and have people think I'm a—horrors—fundamentalist, or should I hedge?

Today's three great cultural flashpoints are abortion, same-sex marriage, and evolution. We can hedge on them and justify our hedging: Playing it cool here will help me gain for Christ people who would otherwise walk away.

I'm not knocking such considerations. Nor am I assuming that anyone who tries to meld eternal truth and contemporary trends lacks courage: Some do so on evangelistic principle, others because they believe what they're saying is true. But attempts to unify antitheses generally defy logic.

Over the past 15 years I've tried to explain some of the problems of Darwinism. Last year I raised questions about the "theistic evolution" that Francis Collins espouses, but didn't offer answers—and several WORLD readers have pressed me for more (see "Theistic evolutionist," July 10, 2009).

OK. It seems to me that since the Bible emphasizes God's purposefulness and macro-evolutionary theory emphasizes randomness, the two are contradictory. Theistic evolutionists stretch the laws of logic: How can Creation be a sovereignly guided sequence and at the same time a sequence of chance, with random mutations and survival of the fittest?

Theistic evolutionists can answer that question by saying that God has intervened trillions of times to make evolution turn out the way He wants. Or, that the original code He wrote for all life has a mechanism to trigger mutations just when He wants them. Either way, theistic evolution contradicts the biblical account.

Chapter 2 of Genesis tells how "God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." Later in the chapter God makes Eve out of Adam. Unless we see this chapter as metaphor rather than history, the biblical account is incompatible with the idea that Adam and Eve each had two parents plus some beneficial mutations.

Theistic evolutionists logically have to discount other parts of the Bible as well. It's not just that when we de-historicize parts it's hard to stop. (Were Noah, Abraham, and Moses also metaphors?) We also have to discredit Paul the apostle, who cited early Genesis as fact (see Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 11 and 15, and 1 Timothy 2).

For that matter, Jesus also saw it that way (Matthew 23, Luke 11). Those who say, "God merely used evolution to bring about the results He desired," may think they're avoiding arguments, but they are either relinquishing what's crucial—biblical inerrancy—or redefining chunks of Scripture as creative writing and literary appreciation rather than history.

Should we hug evolution to further evangelism? Theologian Wayne Grudem has it right: "Theistic evolutionists tell us that Christians can surrender to this massive attack on the Christian faith and safely, inoffensively, tack on God... To put it in terms of an equation, when atheists assure us that matter + evolution + 0 = all living things, and then theistic evolutionists answer, no, that matter + evolution + God = all living things, it will not take long for unbelievers to conclude that, therefore, God = 0." Again, let me stress that many theistic evolutionists are honorable individuals. Some think the evidence against macro-evolution is weak. Others think we must bow to evolution or bow out of academic and media summit conferences. I don't think that's inevitable, but if it happens: For such a time as this we must learn to trust God to change hearts without our having to back away from the Bible.

There are five fundamentals of the faith which are essential for Christianity, and upon which we agree:

1. The Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:1; John 20:28; Hebrews 1:8-9).

2. The Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27).

3. The Blood Atonement (Acts 20:28; Romans 3:25, 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:12-14).

4. The Bodily Resurrection (Luke 24:36-46; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 15:14-15).

5. The inerrancy of the scriptures themselves (Psalms 12:6-7; Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20). [1]

And those who disagree with any of the above doctrines are not Christians at all. Rather, they are the true heretics.
Amen!

Seems like this is very, very similar to the problem of predestination (and/or Divine foreknowledge) versus free will.

Even "fundamentalist" Christians will grant wide latitude to chance in history, based both in purely natural contingencies, and in human choice, whim and folly. Yet they believe God is able to work His will through history nevertheless. How much more opportunity is there for God to "tweak" (in whatever fashion) changes spanning hundreds of thousands, to millions, to billions of years, than to deftly drive the relatively rapid rush and tumble of human history?

Or think about the general Christian doctrine of creation.

Christians, as theists, of course reject pantheism: the claim that the world is the same thing as (or is a part of) God. Therefore, even if the world is contingent on God -- depends radically on God for it's being -- it is nevertheless completely distinct from Him. It is a separate thing from God, a thing made by him.

At the same time Christians virtually all reject the radical absolutism which some theists (e.g. many Muslims) attribute to God's direct will in governing Creation. For instance the claim that natural law, and even simple cause and effect, don't actually exist, but God only makes them appear to exist: A fire doesn't generate heat. God just makes it to be hot around fires. In principle He could make an ordinary wood fire "burn" cold. What's more, the cold fire would be no more "miraculous" than the hot one, nor less natural, for there is no "natural," no inherent nature of things, only God's Will.

IOW, Christian theists not only insist that the creation is separate from God, but also insist that it has real autonomy. The Creation, and each and all of it's components and inhabitants, are not mere puppets manipulated by God.

So, although being is -- in the orthodox Christian theist's view -- entirely a gift from God, it is an unstinting gift. There are no hidden (puppet) strings attached. Each thing made by God is authentically itself, and therefore free to be itself, and therefore free to act according to it's own nature.

Clearly chance and contingency exist throughout creation. Not just, or even especially, in biology. The authenticity of Divinely gifted being mean that chance and contingency are not mere appearances, but are real.

So why does chance become a special problem for theism in biology, when the same problem exists in almost every other aspect of creation?

If God can (in whatever fashion) master chance and contingency across the entire universe (or the multiverse, or even multitudes of multiverses, whatever may be the case) -- while yet maintaining the authenticity and autonomy of creaturely being -- then why would God's mastering the biology of one small planet, with chance and contingency nevertheless remaining likewise real, be a special concern for creationists?

Granted, it's a mystery how God manages this. That the creation is separate and autonomous from God, but that God works His will through it; that God works miracles, seemingly "violating" natural law, but that natural law remains real; that even volitional beings cannot help but do God's will, but that the freedom of their will is real: all of these things are as "contradictory" as biblical literalism versus scientifically inferred earth history and evolution.

Presumably Olasky thinks that these problems are soluble throughout the remainder of reality, else he wouldn't be an orthodox Christian theist, but declares the same problems insoluble in the particular case of biology alone. I think that's contradictory.

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