3.       The connection between natural history and salvation history:  This seems to be a (maybe, the) major area of disagreement between evolutionary creationists and intelligent design proponents. 

On the one hand, there is the modern evolutionary understanding of natural history (often called neo-Darwinism or something similar). Here is my understanding of that narrative: Certain elements of nature contained self-organizing and self-replicating properties.  These properties are able, from a natural perspective, to account for the information and complexity that were necessary for life to arise.  Once life began, random variation and natural selection are sufficient (again naturally speaking) to explain the diversity of life we see today.  Evolutionary creationists understand God to have guided and sustained the entire process by means of ordinary providence.  No direct divine activity is discernible or necessary.

On the other hand, the grand narrative of the Bible presents us with an account of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and eventual Consummation.  Salvation history presents God as the sovereign Lord, active in revealing and saving power.  He manifests himself throughout the Old and New Testaments in signs, wonders, and miracles, and culminates his saving work in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Ordinary providence is spiked with the mighty acts of God.

How does BioLogos connect the two narratives?  Are the two worldviews even compatible?  Southern Baptists affirm that ordinary providence is the way that God generally deals with His creation.  But salvation history is discontinuous.  It contains many moments in which the events that occur can be understood only as special, unique actions of God.  This is why creationists, whether they are YEC advocates, or OEC advocates, or even ID proponents, expect to find evidence of discontinuity in the natural record also.  To laymen (in scientific matters) like me, the relationship between BioLogos and ID proponents appears to be hostile.  And the debate seems to be over whether or not we should expect to find evidences of divine activity in the natural order.  The BioLogos proponents have not demonstrated how they understand the two narratives to come together.       

4.         The status of Adam and Eve: Evolutionary creationists appear to disagree among themselves about whether or not Adam was a historical figure.  Some, such as Denis Lamoureux, declare Adam to be a mythical character.  Others (Denis Alexander comes to mind) view Adam as representative of the first Neolithic farmers with whom God entered into a relationship.

For most Southern Baptists, including me, the historicity of Adam and Eve is a litmus test.  Even a cursory reading of the Bible reveals why we believe this way.  The New Testament authors treat Adam as a historical figure, and they interconnect the mission and work of Jesus with the first man.  Paul repeatedly presents Christ as the last Adam—succeeding where the first Adam failed and redeeming fallen humanity in the process.  C. John Collins has written an excellent book on the subject entitled Did Adam and Eve Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care.  He gives three criteria for an orthodox understanding of Adam and Eve (pp 120-21), and I believe they are worth repeating here.
a.        The origin of the human could not have come about by mere natural processes.
b.        Adam and Eve were “at the headwaters of the human race.”
c.        A historical fall must have occurred very closely to the beginning of the human race.
Evolutionary creationists still have a great deal of work to do in this area.  If no evolutionary theory can be found that can reasonably incorporate above three criteria, then that would be a deal killer.

5.       The perennial problem of evil:  Selfishness, suffering, and death are not spiritually neutral phenomena.  YEC and OEC adherents believe a rupture occurred in the natural order when Lucifer rebelled, and in some ways again when Adam joined him.  The Fall was a ruinous event.  As a result, both moral evil and natural evil exists.  Granted, natural evil is far more ambiguous than moral evil.  But all Christians agree that—as beautiful as the present order is—things are not the way they are supposed to be.  And Christians throughout church history have attributed the sad condition of this present age to the free moral choices of angels and humans.

Evolutionary creationism seems to have a particularly difficult problem on this point.  Evolutionary theory presents selfishness as a virtue—perhaps the only virtue.  Even altruism is seen as well-disguised selfishness.  Christianity has historically viewed selfishness as among the greatest of vices and has seen death as the greatest of enemies.   But according to EC, suffering and death are not tragedies.  Rather they are creative agents that assist the engine of natural selection. 

6.       The nature and authority of Scripture: Southern Baptists are inerrantists, without apology.  We hold to the infallibility of the Bible because we believe it is the Word of God.  God is truth, so the very nature of the divine disclosure is truth, without any mixture of error.  In addition, we believe that the Bible presents itself as inspired, infallible, and inerrant, and that this was the understanding Jesus had of the Scriptures during his earthly ministry.  One is free to reject the Bible’s infallibility, but I think anyone who does so must admit that his view of Scripture is different from our Lord’s.

I read Peter Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation with dismay.  Dr. Enns is a research fellow at BioLogos, and he has published an extensive critique of the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy on this blogsite.  So it would appear that Dr. Enns’ view of inerrancy is at least welcomed at BioLogos, if not promoted.  I know of no SBC seminary professor who agrees with Dr. Enns’ position; certainly none at Southeastern.  This doesn’t automatically mean that he is wrong and we are right.  But it does mean that this is a major hurdle to any serious conversation between Southern Baptists and BioLogos.

Last June, Francis Collins, the founder of BioLogos, was a plenary presenter at the Christian Scholars Conference at Pepperdine Univ., and it was there I heard him speak in person for the first time.  How could one not be impressed? I rejoice in the contributions he has made as a scientist and for the clear, positive witness he gives for the Gospel.  If the members of the BioLogos Foundation someday demonstrate how evolutionary creationism fits reasonably with a high view of Scripture, a credible approach to Gen 1-3, a historical Adam and Eve, and a historical Fall, then I will be the first to take their arguments seriously.  I just don’t think they’ve done that yet.