Tag Archive - evolution

What’s On Your Plate?

January 2, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Culture with 14 Comments

Slowing the blogging pace and stepping back for a week or two over the holidays, I started to think about what streams of conversation are flowing with particular force these days.

Over the past couple of years there have been emergent or missional conversations that always provided ready fodder for conversation. But those streams have largely dried up as ever-present conversation pieces.

Here are a couple of things that strike me as continuing points of interest as I scan the blogosphere. But I’d also love to hear from you: what are you thinking about and finding yourself in vigorous conversation about as you strive to work out what it looks like to faithfully follow Jesus in 2012?

  1. The Gospel. I know that sounds rather broad and… well… settled, but here’s what I mean: in the more or less evangelical circles in which I run, we are finding a good deal of traction in conversations that press us to articulate a holistic gospel that affirms the “spiritual” dynamics of a restored relationship with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus while also affirming that the spiritual work of being at work in the world for the good of all God’s creatures is integral to the faith.

    Recent books by Scot McKnight, Tom Wright, and yours truly are all working to contribute to such a recalibration of the evangelical gospel, that has been too long denying what it should have been affirming (in many circles). The gospel is good news for the whole world.

  2. Human origins after evolution. As denial of evolution becomes a rallying cry for both religiously and politically conservative movements, it moves certain brands of Christianity into more of a backwater. Too many Christians now have too much education for this non-viable position to continue to hold sway among thoughtful evangelicals.

    But, this means that we are confronted with a monumental task. And here is where the conservatives are right: to affirm evolution entails a reconfiguring of the narrative of humanity in significant ways. What can Christians say about the significance of humanity’s place in the cosmos once the story of evolution displaces the story of one-off creation? What can be retained? What must be replaced? Pete Enns’ book, and the interest it is generating even prior to publication, is one piece of bookish evidence about the continuing significance of this issue.

  3. Gender in the church. Here’s one for which I have no direct evidence in terms of tell-tale books. (I apologize.) But, with the continuing surge of the neo-Reformed movement, there has been a concomitant surge theological conviction about male dominance of the church.

What do you think? Are these issues the ones that are active points of conversation in your world? Are there others? I started to wonder if “what the Bible is” might not be another significant point where evangelicals are entering a new place (cf. Christian Smith’s, The Bible Made Impossible), and if folks find themselves increasingly in conversations about sex and sexuality?

Anyone?

Hope, Resurrection, Posture

November 29, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 7 Comments

On Sunday, I posted some thoughts about hope–Christian hope as resurrection hope, followed yesterday by some reflections on the significance of Jesus’ full humanity.

Taking hold of the far-reaching implications of Jesus’ restoration project is something I continually harp on because it can play an important role in transforming the posture with which we hold the gospel.

My experience within evangelical Christian circles has often been one in which followers of Jesus envision themselves as the small, minority truth-holders, struggling to cling to what it right, and ever cautious and even fearful about fully engaging in other “worlds” that might be tainted by godlessness, or liberalism, or the like (since those to are “alike,” right?! *ahem*).

Image: markuso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last night I had the opportunity to participate on a panel that was responding to questions posed by a group of college students. We fielded questions such as, “What are Christians supposed to do about evolution, especially science majors?” “What should Christians think about environmentalism?” “What about people who never hear the message of Jesus?”

The questions are important ones in many respects. But the overall sense I got from the questions was that Christian faith is a small fortress to be guarded carefully. And I wondered if we didn’t need to start reimagining a capacious vision of the reign of God as our gospel.

I think the problem of a small, carefully guarded fortress starts early. In youth group we learn that the gospel means: (1) Jesus died for your sins; (2) you shouldn’t sleep with your boyfriend or girlfriend; and (3) drinking is bad.

There’s not much good news in that, except in the hope that if you can control your hormones you get to be with Jesus drinking grape juice one day.

But what if we begin, instead, with, “God was, in Christ Jesus, reconciling all things to himself”?

Then the world of nature and science does not stand as a looming threat to our faith, but as a witness to the breadth of the saving care of God.

Then the preservation of the environment becomes not merely a fleeting liberal hobby-horse, but a crucial pillar in the eternal plan of God. You think you care about the environment? Well, you’ve got nothing on the creator.

Maybe even questions about sex and sexuality can be received, gratefully, as gifts, rather than fearful lands to be trod, if at all, with extreme caution.

Paul talks about the reception of the Spirit as a transforming moment that moves us from slavish fear to the freedom of the glory of the children of God. It moves us into the realm where we know ourselves to be members of God’s family and instruments in the turning of the ages.

Posture, it seems to me, is as important as details. If we cannot posture ourselves with arms wide open to the cosmos that God has reconciled to himself, then we are not so positioned as to come to faithful answers to the questions that plague us. And we might not even be in the position to be plagued by the right questions.

John Schneider Resigns from Calvin College

August 25, 2011 in Academia, Bible Thoughts with 12 Comments

Last year there was a bit of a storm over some articles published by John Schneider and Dan Harlow of Calvin College. The issue they raised was what Christians might do in the face of mounting scientific argument that there was no Paradise, and no single human pair from which the rest descended.

John Schneider has now resigned.

The Grand Rapids News ran an article about the resignation. They then ran a follow-up story about Dan Harlow being unhappy with how Calvin is portraying the matter. The latter seems to be following up on an article in The Banner.

The views of Schneider and Harlow were recently cited in an NPR story on Evangelicals and Adam and Eve.

If you’re interested in reading the essays that created the storm, you can download a PDF of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.

This is the sort of controversy that always lurks in the back of my mind as I wrestle with how we conceive of our Christian identity and thus what it looks like to act Christianly, and read the Bible Christianly, in our world. I don’t claim to have any easy answers.

Generally, however, I wish we were more patient and had better practices of wrestling with new and controversial ideas. The questions raised about human origins by various sciences are only getting more pressing and complex. Now more than ever we need people who are willing to ask hard questions without presupposing we come with the answers in tow.

Hermeneutics and Ethics

August 12, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 9 Comments

A day or two ago I talked a bit about how we might think through the human origins question.

To me, the most important issue confronting Christians is not what answers we give to questions but how we handle them. That’s one of the most significant factors behind my “Storied Theology” project: I want us to reconceptualize what Christianity is, so that we will not only interpret the bible differently, but act differently as well.

This is not because I don’t think that answers matter, or because I have some morbid, academic interest in the ways we carry out theological debate and want to write a book on argumentation.

I want us to think, interpret, and act differently because I have high levels of frustration at the pervasive failure of Christians to act Christianly toward one another or toward the world outside the church.

And I do mean that we have not acted like Christians. But of course, this means that I have to have some idea of what defines Christianity, which means that I probably have a different idea about that than the people who are defending their actions in the name of Christ.

And this is where the whole bounded-set, centered-set, river analogy comes in.

For the folks who are demanding that Adam is a do-or-die figure for Christianity, Christianity is a set of persons or beliefs bounded by a string of theological commitments. This means that anyone transgressing those theological borders must either be shot while trying to escape or else sealed off from the sheep whom those borders are erected to protect.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


The ethic of bounded-set Christianity is service to, and preservation of, the tradition of the church. This was so when Irenaeus was propagating the rule of truth as the measure for biblical interpretation, and it is so for the Christians who would bite, devour, and consume one another due to variance in theological commitment.

We have to think of the place of Christian theology in more dynamic terms–not so that we can embrace every whim of passing theological fancy, but so that we can act as though (1) variation in theology does not threaten the integrity of Jesus Christ who is, himself, the Truth, and thus (2) conversation about new ideas will not bring the church to ruin.

The church is not doctrine.

The church is the body of the crucified Christ.

Therefore, we do not read scripture to preserve doctrines.

We read scripture to discover what it means that the crucified Christ is the resurrected Lord over all.

Therefore, we do not act as though preserving doctrine is our highest calling.

We act as though the truth of Christ is preserved through a people enacting upon the world the saving narrative of the crucified messiah.

Hermeneutics, Origins, Ethics

August 10, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 15 Comments

Yesterday I put up two posts that, together, open up the question of how we should think about new ideas that challenge what Christians have “always thought.”

In the bounded-set thinking that comes most naturally to many of us, the arrival of a new idea, especially if it challenges an old one, automatically generates a response of rejection. It falls outside the boundary of received Christian orthodoxy.

It, and its proponents and adherents, is rejected.

This is what’s happening with the evolution and historicity of Adam question. And I understand it.

The Christian tradition has built a lot on Adam. The idea of a historical first parent who fell from a state of innocence is important for understanding humanity, creation, and even how salvation works.

But here’s what we’ve seen over the past hundred and fifty years: after scientists started working with a theory of evolution, data from innumerable branches and sub-branches of various scientific disciplines started making other discoveries that supported that theory and did not support instant appearance of diversified species on earth.

The latest challenge to the traditionally conceived Christian story of origins is genomic data that points to pools of thousands rather than a single individual.

So what do Christians do with all this?

First, we recognize that we are standing at a different point, downstream from our theological forebears. They had scientific worldviews that were impacting their articulations of humanity and sin (sin transferred in sperm, anyone?). And, their scientific worldviews were closer to the biblical writers: we hadn’t yet discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, for example, or found fossils of animals that died millions of years before anything like a human being was on the earth.

Image Copyright Javier Martinez

This does not mean that we will automatically get right what they got wrong, but it does meant that to be faithful to our point in the story we will have to say something that makes sense in our own day and time, even as those who came before us said something that made sense in theirs.

That first step is huge. It is, I think, the greatest hurdle: to clear the bar of setting our minds in such a posture that we can listen to the issue, wrestle with the problem, without defensiveness.

Second, we revisit the biblical story to see where we might have been over-reading our preconception into the story. The particular creation story in which there is a person named Adam who breaks a command and thereby brings ruin on himself and, apparently, the world, is the same story that then proceeds to have Adam’s son Cain run off to marry foreigners.

This indicates that Genesis 2-4 is a story that does not intend to give an entirely comprehensive account of the origin of humanity. Yes, it intends to tell a story within which God’s people have a unique place, and where a ruptured relationship with God wreaks havoc in every aspect of life, but there’s also a window into the possibility that this fits within a larger narrative of an already-extant humanity.

Then, of course, we step further back and realize that we have two creation stories in Gen 1-2 alone, and that each tells a different narrative about humanity as it fits within the unfolding of creation. Then there are other biblical stories–creation from a slain Leviathan, anyone?

We start to get a perspective on creation that is polyvalent, to say the least. When the question is opened up, by our modern scientists, about how we did, in fact, come to be here, we have our eyes opened afresh to see that the biblical narratives are anything but dogmatic about the answer. They give evidence of different ancient Israelites at different times and places painting different pictures in order to communicate something significant about humanity’s and, more importantly Israel’s, place in the cosmos.

And Paul did the same thing, building on Adam traditions.

The next step, then, is beginning to return to our time. What must we say about the creation of the world, about humanity, about “The Man” and “The Woman” whom we meet in the early chapters of Genesis?

We will not be able to provide a viable answer to that question if we are unwilling to ask it with integrity for our own day and time.

Bounded-set Christianity has not place for the question at all. Ironically, those most committed to history are least willing to learn from it. Yes, the earth does circle the sun; and yes, Christianity survived this knowledge. But conservative Protestant Christianity, in particular, refuses to be chastened by the mistakes of the past, and continues to insist on the absolute necessity of data that science has repeatedly disproved.

The question, as I see it, is not whether this scientific information is correct, but rather how we will articulate faithful Christianity in light of it.

We are downstream and there is no swimming back.

Ed. note: the author got so caught up in the “Trajectories and challenges” part, he forgot about “ethics.” What does all this have to do with how we act as Christians? Come back tomorrow and find out!

Adam Debate on NPR

August 9, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Media, Quotes with 2 Comments

NPR ran a story this morning on the Adam and Eve debate in Evangelicalism. It included this quote:

“Evangelicalism has a tendency to devour its young,” says Daniel Harlow, a religion professor at Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school that subscribes to the fall of Adam and Eve as a central part of its faith.

“You get evangelicals who push the envelope, maybe; they get the courage to work in sensitive, difficult areas,” Harlow says. “And they get slapped down. They get fired or dismissed or pressured out.”

Yes. That. Got take a listen. Or a read.

Adam–Firstborn of All Creation?

July 27, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Science with 19 Comments

In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the patriarch sees a vision of Adam and Eve in paradise. He sees them intertwined with each other, being fed grapes by a dragon-like creature.

The failure of Adam and Eve is a cause of great consternation to Abraham: why did God create these people, give them dominion, only to ruin humanity upon the earth (23:12)?

Here is the divine answer:

And he said to me, “Hear, Abraham! Those who desire evil, and all whom I have hated as they commit them–over them did I give him dominion, and he was to be beloved of them.”

Adam, it seems, was not the firstborn of all human creatures. He was created to be the ruler of the human creatures who committed all sorts of evil. He was given dominion over sinful humans, in order to be loved by them and thus, it seems, draw them to obedience to Israel’s God.

This underscores two things.

First, an most generally, it reinforces the idea that the story of Adam has to be read as part of the narrative that defines the specific people of Israel. It was written to introduce their story and is best read as such an introduction. If we read it as simply about humanity our reading is too thin.

Secondly, it is good for us to realize that long before “scientific” concerns started giving people reason to reread the Adam narrative, early Jews were reading it differently from what we see as the “normal” or “straight” reading. Adam and Eve did not have to be read as the first humans ever to come on the scene. Early Jewish readers “knew” that Cain had somewhere to go, a people to go to, after he killed Abel.

Whereto? To the people whom Adam and Eve had been created to rule and bring into conformity with the will of God.

Please note, I’m not saying that this is the correct reading of the text; rather, I’m suggesting that it shows us a couple of important things. One of these is that the story of Adam precedes stories of Davidic kings and messiahs a story about a representative human ruling the world on God’s behalf. The other is that such a recognition can lead to a reading of Gen 2-3 that sees Adam and Eve entering a story that is already well underway–and that this did, in fact, happen before there were scientific pressures pushing anyone in such a direction.

Adam: Back in the Saddle Again

June 9, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 26 Comments

‘Adam and Eve are back in the saddle again. The cover story of this month’s Christianity Today details the ongoing debate about human origins.

This is an important conversation for us to have.

As I read this article and talk about these issues with my friends and colleagues, I am increasingly struck by two things. First, as I accept the conclusions of scientists I am increasingly consenting to things I know nothing about. I do not now, and probably will not ever, have firsthand knowledge of DNA sequencing, pre-genome project evolutionary evidence and theory, or archaeological evidence of hominoid development.

I anticipate that I will always be dependent, at some level, on some sort of scientific consensus to tell me what the origins of humanity are, even as I anticipate that my friends who are not in the theological studies academy will always be dependent on me to tell them about the ins and outs of making sense of the New Testament as a set of first century documents.

With such dependence on the professionals, why do I not exercise a bit more reserve in my affirmation of evolution theory, and old earth, and the like?

Image: twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This is my second point.

Evolution, as a theory, has created expectations that later scientific research, even brand new scientific fields, has confirmed, whereas literal creationism and attempts at biblically created depictions of the world are always having to adjust dramatically to account for the new evidence.

Darwin came along and said that species evolved from one another. This is a process that would take millions (at least) of years. Biologists begin postulating relationships among species. Heredity and change are explored.

Paleontologists and archaeologists dig and explore. They discover early signs of tool use that seems to go back tens of thousands of years–humanity in particular and certainly the earth in general seem older than 6,000 years.

Researchers build on evolutionary theory, and discover that cancer cells evolve–and develop cancer treatments.

A brand new field of genome mapping comes onto the scene, and the results confirm the expectations of evolutionary biology: not only do humans share functional DNA with other primates, we also share the sequences that don’t seem to do anything.

Translation: things that would be part of us if we have evolved from something other than precisely what we are right now were, in fact, discovered in the DNA sequences–and these “somethings” are shared with primates. And, there is no reason on theories of direct creation why God would put such unnecessary ingredients into his humans, or chimpanzees.

What this tells me is that scientific accounts of human origins are on the right track in way that a literal biblical rendering of human origins is not. The latter fails in the role of accurately predicting what the evidence will demonstrate–which is precisely the role of a good scientific theory.

No, the earth is not flat. No, the earth is not a land mass supported by pillars that stand in the midst of the sea. No, there is no firmament holding back the waters of the heavens. No, the sun does not race back around to its starting point every night so that it can make its course over the earth’s sky once again. No, the earth is not 6,000 years old.

So what about humans?

The Reality of Adam and the Story of Christ

October 25, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Science with 37 Comments

On Friday of last week, David Opderbeck asked a challenging question. I had posted on “Anthroposis,” the idea that what we really need is to become more truly human than we already are. Or, in the biblical narrative, to return to the humanity from which we have fallen. David asked,

Here’s a question: anthroposis Biblically is a recapitulation of the first man before sin. But, scientifically, there was no “first man”. How do we hold this missional narrative together if human evolution is true?

I have been wrestling with this question quite a bit lately. I just finished a book on narrative theology, and found that I couldn’t tell the story of Jesus without constantly conversing with Genesis 1-3. The Adam theology of the NT, the Jesus theology of the NT, is written in innumerable ways as an echo of the creation narratives of the first few chapters of Genesis. What, then, if these aren’t literal accounts of what happened? Where does that leave the story?

This is a difficult question, and I want to try to hold onto two things at the same time.

First, to say that they are not literal or historical accounts of how things came to be as they are now is not to say that these stories are not true. They are true narratives about the world. But how are they true and what truth do they teach is a more complex question.

Second, one of the ways that these stories work is that they tell the story of the past in such a way that it becomes clear that the people telling the stories are God’s present means for bringing the world/humanity to a destiny something like what the stories depict.

Genesis 1 uses sonship language to describe humanity as kings, ruling the world on God’s behalf. And what do you know? The Davidic kings are envisioned as God’s specially chosen agents who are enthroned to be God’s sons, ruling the nations for God.

Genesis 1 borrows the imagery of the Ancient Near Eastern creation myths that would place humanity in perpetual servitude, enslavement to the gods, and Marduk in particular. And what do you know? In this retelling of the story not only is Israel’s God shown to be the real creator, and one much more powerful than the other gods who have to fight their way to victory, but humanity is the pinnacle and glory of creation, not ever-oppressed slaves. When God’s purposes for humanity are realized, Israel will not be enslaved to Marduk in Babylon, but participating in the reign of its king, the reign of humanity over the earth.

The point is that stories of beginnings are written to plot a trajectory for the story that follows. Genesis 2 is a bit more on the descriptive side, indicating why the world is the way it is. But even there, I think there are indications of this story of origins setting a trajectory for a world that Israel is at the middle of.

For me, once we realize that these stories were not made to give a disinterested account of some hoary past but rather to speak to God’s plans for a particular people to bring the world from a certain kind of disorder into a certain kind of (what we now see as) restored and glorious future, the historicity question takes a back seat.

The story is still true, and we still plot the story of Jesus within that story, recognizing now that he is the surprising answer to the unrealized destiny of Adam. If we can recognize those pictures as idealized projections into the past of what God intends for the future given his present commitments, then I think we can keep moving forward with them firmly kicking off our story.

I think that some such process is tied up with God’s binding himself to this particular story of Israel.

What do you think? Can something like that work, based not on “we have to trash these stories because of evolution,” even, but “we have to rethink these stories based on what we know about their place in the history of Israel and their ancient environment?

CRC on Scripture and Science

September 26, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Church, Science with 10 Comments

After I posted last week about the recent publications by a couple of Calvin College professors on the issues of evolution and biblical interpretation, a friend linked me to the Christian Reformed Church’s statement on this issue. It reads:

Position

All of life, including scientific endeavor, must be lived in obedience to God and in subjection to his Word. Therefore we encourage Christian scholarship that integrates faith and learning. The church does not impose an authorized interpretation of specific passages in Scripture; nor does it canonize certain scientific hypotheses. Instead, it insists that all theological interpretations and all scientific theories be subject to Scripture and the confessions.

Humanity is created in the image of God; all theorizing that minimizes this fact and all theories of evolution that deny the creative activity of God are rejected.

There is quite a history behind this, but the minimalism of the statement leaves a lot of room to ask questions and explores possible answers within a biblical framework.

In a comment over the weekend, Daniel Harlow brought it back to that biblical framework. “I’ve been discussing Genesis.” Indeed. That’s the point in a number of these discussions: how do we best read Genesis, how do we best understand its genre, how do we best understand why these stories begin our Bible and what we are intended to learn from them?

The CRC has determined that the statement of humanity in the image of God is at the heart of what is true about these creation narratives.

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