Darrell Falk of BioLogos asked me and several other SBC professors to write articles which expressed our concerns with the BioLogos position on theistic evolution.  BioLogos was founded by Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and current Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.  Over the next few days, I will post sections of the article I wrote for this project.  When BioLogos publishes the article in full on their site, I will include the link as well.

I thank Darrel Falk for the opportunity to write this brief essay for the BioLogos website.  When Dr. Falk extended the invitation to me and other SBC seminary professors like me to write a series of essays, he knew full well that we would mostly express our concerns and disagreements with a number of BioLogos positions.  I commend Dr. Falk for his graciousness and bravery.  I intend at this time merely to introduce the topics about which my colleagues will write more extensively.

Professors at the six Southern Baptist seminaries subscribe to the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M), the statement of faith adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention.  The BF&M provides a summary of Christian beliefs from a Baptist perspective, but it is conspicuously silent on three subjects: Calvinism, the nature of the millennial kingdom, and the age of the earth.  Because Southern Baptists hold to a spectrum of views on each of these hot-button items, no specific position is taken.  It is the third matter—creation, the age of the earth, and all the attendant matters, that concern us now.  The BF&M declares God to be the Creator of the Universe and describes humans as the special creation of God, but the confession has no section that deals specifically with the doctrine of Creation.

I think it would be safe to say that most (but not all) Southern Baptists hold to young-earth creationism (YEC).  Among the faculty of our six seminaries one would find a mix of YEC proponents and OEC (old-earth creationism) adherents.  I sometimes describe myself as a “disappointed young-earther.”  By that I mean I started out holding to the young-earth position but the shortcomings of most YEC arguments and the shenanigans of certain YEC advocates forced me to move to the OEC position.  I am not aware of any SBC seminary faculty who advocates theistic evolution or evolutionary creationism (EC).  Many (including me) are involved with or express sympathy to the intelligent design movement (ID).

So what are some of the concerns we have with evolutionary creationism as typically presented by the BioLogos Foundation?  Briefly, they are:    

1.       Concerns about theological method:  Christians cannot do theology in a vacuum.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that theology is never done in a vacuum, and we should not pretend that it is.  And the BioLogos Foundation is correct in arguing that evangelicals cannot ignore the latest advances in biology, geology, and other related fields.  Our goal should be more than merely finding a way to reconcile Genesis with the latest discoveries in genetics.  Rather, our task as pastors and theologians is to present a theology of Creation that provides a solid worldview for Christians to work in the natural sciences with integrity for the glory of God.

One gets the impression at times that evolutionary creationism is a theory in search of theological justification. It’s easy to see why believing scientists who hold to evolution would want to find ways that evolution could be compatible with orthodox Christian doctrine.  However, theologically speaking, the danger of the tail wagging the dog is very real.  Can one start with the Scriptures and arrive at anything resembling theistic evolution? Are we to start with a scientific conclusion and then look for biblical sanction?  I don’t think most scientists would want to do science the way evolutionary creationists seem to be asking theologians to do theology.

2.       Genesis has only so much hermeneutical elasticity: Genre and hermeneutics (the science of interpretation) have always been difficult topics.  In the early days of the church, from Basil of Caesarea to Augustine, scholars struggled with the proper way to understand the creation account in Genesis.  Lately, however, the concordist and non-concordist approaches to the first 11 chapters of Genesis seem to be of unending and ever-increasing variety and complexity.  Theistic evolutionists have contributed to the conversation.  Certain evolutionary creationists ask us to accept more and more fanciful interpretations of Genesis.    

Take for example, the account of God creating Eve from Adam’s rib:

 “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.”—Gen 2:21-22 (ESV)

Should we understand, as some theistic evolutionists suggest, that the real message of these verses is that God gave a female hominid the same awareness of the divine that He gave to a male hominid?  Is this the intended meaning of the account?  I just don’t see how we can arrive at such an understanding with integrity.  The textual skin of Genesis 1-3 does not readily fit over an evolutionary drum.

Some evolutionary creationists treat the creation accounts in ways that are not far from the allegorical interpretations of Origen.  Hans Frei observed that such methods often hide an embarrassment about the biblical narrative.  They allow one to play fast and loose with the text while appearing to take the Bible seriously.  The BioLogos community has yet to convince Southern Baptist scholars that they are correctly handling the Genesis accounts.  

to be continued...