What Would Jesus Believe?

Karl Giberson of The BioLogos Foundation wrote on CNN's Belief Blog that Jesus would believe evolution so we should, too.  His reasoning can be broken into a syllogism like this:

• Jesus believes whatever is true.
• Evolution is true.
• So Jesus would believe evolution.

But the logic fails because the second premise isn't proven.  Whether or not evolution is true is the big question.  This syllogism fells prey to question begging.  Giberson believes it's true.  But many of us aren't persuaded.  So to argue for it based on the claim that Jesus would believe it isn't persuasive.  I agree Jesus believes all true things.  Playing the Jesus card doesn't negate the fallacy of premise two.

Those of us who aren't persuaded that evolution is true don't reject it merely on the basis that it's incompatible with Genesis, but on the poor philosophy and lack of evidence.  Note how he relegates it to the oral tradition of desert nomads.  It's God's revelation and understanding what it means is of highest priority - or should be - the Jesus' followers. Does Giberson think so?

Let's apply his technique to the Pentateuce and Genesis. 

• Jesus believes whatever is true.
• Jesus quoted the Pentateuch as true and authoritative, and the Pentateuch includes Genesis.
• So Jesus would believe Genesis is true and authoritative.

Saying that Genesis is true and authoritative doesn't mean we don't have to work at understanding what it means.  But it can't be dismissed as Giberson does.

Note also he claims that science began in the 17th century.  Perhaps he meant to claim something more refined than this broad claim.  Science is an ancient field of knowledge, and those who studied it prior to the 1600s were serious practitioners.  What happened to science in the 17th century was the Age of Reason, when science began to be dominated by a philosophy, that is materialism.  And that philosophy is what drives the modern dogma of evolution, not science.

Comments

[ToNy]

I haven't met a Christian who will stop being Christian, if evolution is proven true.

Are they even out there anymore?

So I don't see why it matters either way.

[James]

ToNy - I've seen Albert Mohler talk about how evolution and Christianity can't possibly go together, so I'm guessing there are a few Christians who put that much emphasis on it.

I think in general though, Christians need to be removing 6 Day Creationism from their apologetic. I have had too many people tell me they could not become Christians because they believe in evolution. Christians need to stop packaging that in to following Jesus, when it really has nothing important to do with following Him.

Instead, I see Christians respond to these objections by just trying harder to prove 6 Day Creationism, as if they could convince a non-Christian of that truth and then move from there to Jesus. All it does is push more people away.

[Maria Cochrane]

Thank you STR - this is very helpful I teach logic in a classical Christian school and we have just been learning about circular reasoning. I'm going to give the CNN post to my 7th graders to read and analyze and then I'll share with them your thoughts the following day.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

1) Even if a six day event were proven, it wouldn't move the No-God, aka Atheist either toward or away from his or her baseline.

2) I say this b/c there is enough wiggle room for serious questioning (there would be then too) and therefore the Theist is not moved either.

3) Creation simply invokes a Creator; how He made it is not why most, if not all, of us move either toward or away from Him.

4) John Lennox has a piece on six ages, as the word used for day is also used for ages, and even more than that there is an implied time lag (according to him).

5) This is near the tale end of the DVD "Is Faith Delusional?" by Ravi Zacharias John Lennox.

6) He states he has written a book on this in great detail (six ages rather than days, from the formless and shapless up to today) and he gives the name of it in his monologue...but I don't recall the name.

7) John Lennox is a serious scientist and functions in a highly academic circle comprised mostly of "Non-Theists" (its easier on the stomach of the book-buying public than Atheist) many of whom are widely published. I say this to say that he would not put forth a flimsy work on such a topic, at least if he can be judged by his other writings. I haven't read it.

8) But even if his book becomes widely accepted, or even proven, it will not move the Atheist into the Theist's camp. But, I do think James and ToNy have a point: there are those for whom this is "the" deciding factor. But there are many for whom the answer will not move us: either toward or away from Him, whether we are Theists or Atheists.

9) Here I feel we need to all ask "Why?" as it may point us to something more fundamental about why we, all of us of any view, believe what we believe.

Love Himself rescued me. Literally. That's nearly imposible to trump.

Or, Where was God when I, or my wife, or husband, or child, needed, really needed, Him? That's nearly imposible to trump.

[James]

"So to argue for it based on the claim that Jesus would believe it isn't persuasive."

This seems like a misrepresentation of the article (something I'm noticing quite often on this blog.) At no point does the article claim evolution is true because Jesus believes it's true.

The author actually spends 90% of article arguing for evolution based on agreed upon scientific evidence. Stating, "But many of us aren't persuaded," isn't exactly a useful argument. There has been little response from Creationists about the "broken genes" issue that the author brings up in the article, and vague, "I'm not persuaded" responses are unhelpful.

I think in this issue (and just about any other debate), one must ask, "What *would* persuade me?" and then try to determine if that is reasonable. I think too often we get stuck in our current beliefs to the point where there really isn't anything that could persuade us otherwise.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

James,

I think you are right in that "not persuaded" is weak; but to fully defend it takes books, as does fully refuting such items.

Do you agree?

Many of us, with Nobel Prizes, and PhD's in biochemistry, and biophysics, and biology, and physics, and Pure-Mathematics, are not convinced. Francis Crick continues to refine his theory of Panspermia for obvious reasons.

Many with such years of research ARE convinced. Many are NOT. Clearly this is not a question of intelligence. At least I don't see it that way.

Do you agree?

As for me, we are persuaded, in the face of such information, by often more moving events:

Love Himself rescued me. Literally. That's nearly imposible to trump.

Or, Where was God when I, or my wife, or husband, or child, needed, really needed, Him? That's nearly imposible to trump

Six days. Six Ages (Lennox). Six Trillion. It won't matter in the face of those experiences.

Do you agree?

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

James:

To "qualify" my last post:

Felt realities are one of several realities which move us. The purely Pontificated Realities, or the Cerebral, are as well. As is the purely physical. And etc.

I mean to offer that all of these impact all of us to some degree and shape what we feel is true about the world and universe we live in. "Raw Data" is one of several avenues in which we move and see and form belief.

I feel that James may be offering that it may be the "only" one. Some life experiences matter in very deep ways; for the Atheist and for the Theist. I think it is an error to simply dismiss anyone as merely "stuck in their belief".

Do you agree?

[James]

"I think it is an error to simply dismiss anyone as merely "stuck in their belief"."

Thanks for your thoughts, LHRM. I wasn't dismissing people as stuck in their beliefs, but just warning all (including myself) to think about what is required to persuade us to change our minds on a topic.

I agree that intelligent people disagree on this issue, but having a Masters degree in science myself and interacting at that level with other post-graduates and professors, I can honestly say that even people with such degrees can spend their time and energy just trying to prove their preconceptions rather than actually trying to learn and advance understanding.

[Janney]

Giberson believes it's true. But many of us aren't persuaded.

Is this a Calvinist thing, or an STR thing? I’m assuming it’s not just a Melinda thing.

And is this a lack of acceptance of natural selection as an evolutionary means? Or is this a lack of acceptance of evolution by any means? Is it possible that this is a refusal to accept at all that human beings are related, biologically, to every other living thing on the planet?

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

Actually that is true very James; an easy pattern to fall into, me included.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

How about "that is very true James" ....sorry about the typo ~~~

[Josh]

Why should anyone believe that evolution is true?

[Janney]

Josh,

Should I take this to mean that you do not believe that humans are biologically related to any other living things?

[Brad B]

Hi Janney, it seems to me that there's a missing step in your jump to equate that common biological systems and processes necessarily proves evolution. It seems to me that this could just as easily prove that all living things were created by the same Creator being using the same biological systems and processes but configuring them particularly to each kind[a type of signature if you will]. Maybe you could eleborate with a more necessary argument?

[Janney]

Brad B,

Is this a sort of answer to my question? Are you saying that, in fact, Calvinists do accept that human beings are biologically related to every other living thing on the planet? Or what are you saying?

You seem to be aiming for a position that endorses the apparent biological relationship without endorsing any sort of actual descent or ancestry or evolutionary process. Is that where you're going?

[Malebranche]

Well here’s a proposition that, thankfully, there is absolutely no evidence for:

Jesus spent a lot of time trying with all of his might to fight the uphill battle of convincing folks that whales did not evolve from land mammals and that the real reason the scientific community thinks that they did is because that community is full of metaphysical naturalists who will defend their pernicious dogmas at all costs.

[Brad B]

Hi Janney, you said:

"You seem to be aiming for a position that endorses the apparent biological relationship without endorsing any sort of actual descent or ancestry or evolutionary process."

I have reasonable enough faith in the scientific method to hold a position that all living things have some [even significant] biological commonality, but see absolutely no reason to say that this is necessarily because of common ancestry ala evolution of any kind.

Since I dont see any necessary reason to jump from biological relationship to evolutionary process, maybe you can add a proposition to the/a next logical step to make that jump necessary, until then I wonder why you connect the two propositions so directly.

[Josh]

Janney,

I agree with Brad B's line of thought. Affirming a biological relationship doesn't necessitate common ancestry across the board. If it is in fact the case that all of the observed species have distinct ancestors that were created separately and distinct from one another in the past with common design features then this would have good explanatory power for what we observe.

The reason I asked why anyone would believe that evolution is true is because from what exposure I've had to all things evolution, I'm not convinced that it is true. To date I've not been shown any good scientifically verifiable mechanism for evolution to occur. Never mind the fact that before biological evolution can occur, one must make the leap from inorganic material to the spontaneous generation of an organic living organism. There are many and varied problems with the theory of evolution that should restrain one from hasty acceptance.

One topic that I consider myself fairly proficient in dialoguing about is thermodynamics as I am a 3rd year mechanical engineering student. I think the principle of increasing entropy alone provides an insurmountable barrier to biological evolution in a vertical direction. I'd be happy to talk about it with you if you'd like.

[Josh]

A short primer on some of the problems that stand against evolution.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

Janney, all cars have similar engines and mechanics. What should we infer from this? John Lennox comments on this error of confusing Agent with Agency. Henry Ford being the Agent, the internal combustion engine being the Agency.

I do not necessarily offer that you are making this error in logic, it is just that, as Brad mentioned, you have not given "necessary" evidence to confince some that the "possiblity" between Agent and Agency is wholly farce.

You made the immediate connection between similar parts and "darwinian evolution" etc, which demands something further, and something which wholly discounts Agent necessarily, even the very possibility of Agent.

Unrelated somewhat: I would offer that there are other reasons for discounting your take on things (and of course there are reasons to agree with it). But one reason I move away from it on some level is that I have been unable to defend within that framework the felt reality "love is the ultimate ethic". And, having this felt reality, I must either abandon it as an Objective Truth outside of Me, or I must abandon a wholly Naturalistic explanation of things.

[WisdomLover]

I have a Ford Edge. Many of its parts and systems are similar and even identical to those on a Ford Taurus. No doubt, the Edge evolved from the Taurus.

[WisdomLover]

The chief problem with theistic evolution isn't Genesis. Genesis is pretty obviously giving a topical, not a chronological account of the events of origin. The chief problem is Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Theistic evolution, by itself, does not really have much room for the Fall. But without the Fall, it's hard to see what Love Himself rescued me from

[James]

WisdomLover - Theistic Evolution and The Fall narrative can still go together. C.S. Lewis saw them as compatible - his view was that at some point, humanity recognized right from wrong and morality, and then did wrong, sinning. Before that, humanity didn't know morality, and thus was blameless, but after understanding it, and then going against it, "fell".

Another somewhat similar interpretation could still have a literal Adam and Eve that came about through evolution.

And we must also remember that the "Fall" is similar to the trinity - it's a metanarrative we put on the Bible to help us understand it, rather than something the Bible explicitly talks about. It's useful, but we must remember that it's something we've gathered from scripture, rather than something we try to enforce onto the scripture we read.

[WisdomLover]

The Fall and the Trinity are not meta-narratives. They are directly taught in the Bible. It is true that if you do a search for the phrases "Trinity" and "the Fall" at biblegateway.com you'll get 0 hits. You'll also never find Jesus uttering the exact phrase "I am God". But these are all direct teachings from the text.

As for harmonizations of the Fall (and thus the Gospel) and evolution, I'm not saying that one can't be found. I'm just saying that those are the harmonizations that are needed. Harmonization of Genesis with evolution is, frankly, trivial.

I'm pretty sure that Lewis' harmonization falls well short. I think you need a literal Adam and Eve. Otherwise the whole bit about how sin and death came by one man; therefore, salvation comes by one man, doesn't make much sense.

The idea that Adam and Eve evolved is more hopeful, but you'll need to explain why all of humanity came to Fall in the fall of these two. For if they evolved, they weren't the only ones. And they weren't first.

Also the whole story of evolution and its cycle of competition, death and survival seems contrary to the idea of Eden.

[James]

WisdomLover - I will agree that the idea of "The Fall" and evolution are difficult to put together. I now see more Christians, such as Brian McLaren, rejecting "The Fall" as the Bible narrative. I'm not so sure I can really do that (and to be honest, I haven't read anything about alternative narratives, so I can't say much about them.)

In the end, in response to your comments on the gospels, I can say that regardless of how one pictures the fall, I can see quite easily that I fall short of God's standards - heck, I even fall short of my own standards (quite regularly.) While the origin of sin is an important topic, I personally don't need to know it to know that I am someone who sins, I need salvation from those sins, and Jesus died on the cross to save me from them.

So while there are definitely some theological hurdles for an evolutionist to get over (and the BioLogos site has been doing a pretty good job of discussing those hurdles), I certainly don't see evolution and Christianity as completely incompatible as some (such as Al Mohler) would.

[Janney]

Is it safe to assume that, in general, Calvinists (or maybe Reformed Christians?) reject evolution by whatever means? If so, is the reason religious? Is it because of something the Bible says, or scriptural authorities say, or church doctrine says, or etc?

Or is the reason empirical--there's not enough evidence, it's counterintuitive and weird, you can't trust scientists, etc--and these reasons are just being expressed in a Calvinist forum?

[Brad B]

Thanks for the link Josh, concise and informative.

[Janney]

Withdrawn.

[WisdomLover]

James:

While the origin of sin is an important topic, I personally don't need to know it to know that I am someone who sins, I need salvation from those sins, and Jesus died on the cross to save me from them.

The difficulty with sin is more than just the claim that nobody's perfect. It's that we live in a world so infected with sin that even children are born into it.

With no further modifications, if theistic evolution is true, then it's not just that nobody's perfect. It's that nobody ever was perfect. Imperfection is simply the natural state of Mankind. Christ's work brings no healing because there's no disease to be cured of.

If all we have is human immorality as the normal condition of Man, that is, if all we have is human immorality without The Fall as the key explanation, what exactly should one expect Christ's death to do? And why did Christ, Yahweh-Incarnate, the One True God, need to do it?

[James]

WisdomLover - My point was not that I have all the details figured out, but that I know enough to put my faith in Jesus. The other details are just that, details - important, perhaps, but not enough to really do anything to hurt my faith.

It's important that we don't build our faith upon a large interconnected web of doctrines. If we put our faith in Jesus first, then as we are presented with new evidence, ideas, and revelations that force or encourage us to rethink some of our doctrinal beliefs, we can do so without it becoming a crisis of faith.

(I actually wrote a whole blog post on this a little while ago - just click on my name and it's the one at the top, if you're interested.)

Anyway, that is all I am saying. I would agree that theologically speaking, the doctrine of the fall is the largest challenge to the idea of evolution, but I think if someone's faith is in the right place, then accepting evolution isn't going to throw that person into a crisis of faith where they lose their trust in God. It creates some important questions, but people shouldn't lose their faith over it.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

James, Wisdomlover:

I’m an armature on this topic of Evolution-Into-Fall, and etc. I would offer just one thought. I think your take that we start with Him, and move from there as the evidence comes, is key. Also, John Lennox wrote a book on his Genesis take, dealing with six ages, rather than six days. (I don’t recall the name, but he discusses the book briefly near the end of the DVD Is Faith Delusional by Ravi Zacharia and John Lennox)

The problem of Theistic Evolution is not the Fall, it is that it invokes a Creator at all. “That” is, to the Atheist, still non-sense and will not sway him to “respect” it. Once we define Aristotle’s Uncaused Cause as something other than the blind, pitiless, and ultimately indifferent, there is friction.

There are “ages” of, what appears to be, descriptions of Angel upon Earth, Angel and Man upon Earth, and then a Fall of Angels, and then the fall of Man in what is this current Age. All of that is not wholly described to us “just as” what is to come after this Age in that “New Creation” to come is not fully drawn our for us.

The New Testament hints at it, just as the Old Testament hints at what was “before”. But we are not given more than hints, in either direction. But this we know: God is. Love Himself is. Man, in The-Now, is Broken, or Not-Whole.

This business of our current Condition, and what was Before, and what is to come After, is for the Theist to guess at, but, the Atheist, I suggest, will have none of it, it is not more “respectable” to him. There is the Intellect, and yet there is this business of our Will, that which is the very Core of what it is to be Broken, which is to innately choose Self over Other, and in God all men are, at some point, confronted with that “Other” to which the Self must bend.

This, and this alone, is the line in the sand, rather than an intellectual framework which we can present as respectable. I agree with you that when we put Him first, and trust in Him, and then move outward from there, we are safe.

But “Him first” is precisely what that business of Lucifer’s Fall of I, I, and I will not do. The Fall is the Inverse of Love, it is Me and not You, whereas Love is You and not I, Thine and not Mine. Hence Gethsemane shows us the Way out of this current Age.

[WisdomLover]

LHRM-

I was primarily targeting theistic evolutionists with my remarks. They will generally recognize the importance of the Gospel. They may not appreciate the connection of that to the theory of evolution.

Naturally, for the atheist, the fact that evolution tends to preclude a real Fall is a feature, not a defect, of evolution. The atheist would like to fancy himself not in need of rescue by Love Himself.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

Wisdomlover,

Very true; I'm a novice on this area of theistic evolution, but there is a book by G. K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man, which is interesting in its approach to the "arrival" of Man on the scene.

The question of the Fall is, I think, not necessarily an impasse, as the Body and the Body alone is under our microscope, but it is not the Body which Falls.

Rather, the Spirit is What and Who interacts with the Divine, and clearly THIS is not under our microscopes. There is, even in Theistic Evolution, the Spirit, which is housed WITHIN the body, and is not subject to evolution, but is to subject to a Fall.

God may play with genomes, we can only guess, but the point is insignificant. At some point even the Body will know "more" (in the New Creation) and for now is ALSO "infected" by the Fall, not of body, but of the Spirit.

I do not see the Fall as a problem, it is simply not ammendable to the microscope, as it is the business of the Divine: hence the "theistic" of theistic evolution. I'm typing fast at work...hope this gels to the reader...

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

To add:

Man is Body, and Soul, and Spirit. At death there is the "Man" still present with the Lord, and all the rest...and it is "that man" which Falls. The Body is another entity. And etc.

Theistic (Spirit/Un-derived/Primary) Evolution (Body/Derived/Secondary) is a perhaps the proper terminology.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

I mean to say, that I do not really agree with the basic assumption of Theistic Evolution, only that if one is inclined to take that avenue, it is not wholly unfeasible to still posit a Fall.

When we die, etc, "the man" is present with the Lord, while "the body" is not, and it is "the man" which Falls, not the body.

However, I would caution the Theistic Evolutionist that "at some point" that which is purely physical, and not spirit, must be superseded in the process of Creation.

If we do not invoke that which is Underived, Primary, and stay "only" in the body, we run into the problem addressed by this paraphrase of CS Lewis:

"You can't, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with anyone if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of the person and of the character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by blind forces constraining reverberations of photons, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from a deterministic dance to blind, indifferent genes. You can't go on getting very serious pleasure from music, or displeasure from Injustice, if you know and remember that their air of significance are both pure illusion, that you like the one, or dislike the other, only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like the one or dislike the other."

As per the other post on this blog:

I find in that which is "purely" Naturalism no sound basis for Love to be anything beyond either autohypnosis, or a blind, indifferent itch in response to blind, indifferent stimuli (ultimately) , or wishfulfillment. Yet I find myself "knowing" or perhaps "tasting" that Love-Is, and is so even if I, or all of us, simply called it of no account.

Theistic Evolution, if it cannot account for the invocation of Spirit, not "into the man" but "as the man" which Falls, runs aground into the pitfall of the Blind and Indifferent. The "Theistic" half of the equation must be addressed, or else I find Love to be, in such a framework, a lie. But only if it goes unaddressed.

[WisdomLover]

I think one of the key problems is what I mentioned earlier. The Biblical theme to the effect that sin came into the world by one man, and therefore, one man could pay the price. If it turns out that we are all just created with imperfections that make us sinful, and we evolved that way, then it looks like the one-for-one reasoning we find in the Bible just won't work out.

As I said before, I don't think this completely rules out any harmonization with evolution. But it just seems like it has to go farther than the generally observed fact of human sin. It has to be that one man fell and that it makes sense for the sinfulness of all humanity to stem from that singular fact. That's the challenge.

Now, just to show that the challenge can be answered, I'll throw out a crazy theory I heard somewhere, but I don't remember where. It goes like this. The animal skins that God gave to Adam and Eve were not simply the rough pelts from slaughtered animals. They were the very things we now call our bodies. Before this, Adam and Eve had bodies more akin to that of the risen Christ, similar in appearance, but not subject to disease and corruption and capable of doing things like passing through locked doors and so on.

Before the Fall, such bodies were not unusual. The whole order of the universe was different, so different that the laws of nature themselves were different. After the Fall, that changed. It was only then that evolutionary processes with their savage logic of competition and death took control. Adam and Eve waited in naked disgrace while their animal skins were slowly prepared by the inexorable machinery that God put into place when He cursed the Earth for their sake.

Now you have full-blown evolution...it can even be evolution by means of natural selection (bearing in mind that God is the one who designed things so that that works). You also have a particular Fall.

Do I believe this story?

Not a word of it.

Of course, I don't disbelieve it either.

As I see it, the story accomplishes two things: 1) It meets the challenge. 2) It gives you an idea of how far out on a limb you have to go to meet the challenge.

The story is also dangerous, for the text is silent on these matters, so in truth, we too should be silent. I think the best position is this:

1) God made the world as His special creation placing the Man, Adam, and the Woman, Eve, his wife at the head of this creation.

2) This Man, Adam, and this Woman, Eve, fell, and sin entered into the world as a result, overthrowing not just the moral harmony of human souls but subjecting all of nature to frustration.

3) God sent His only begotten Son as an atoning sacrifice for the sin that Adam and Eve let into the Cosmos.

4) The world shows substantial evidence of evolutionary processes leading to the rise of all life including humankind.

5) There is also some evidence against the idea in #3 (evidence, for example, the suggests the world is not as old as evolution needs it to be), though not as great as the evidence for the idea.

6) I do not know how all these facts fit together.

[LoveHimselfRescuedMe]

That's pretty good WisdomLover, I may have to copy/paste this and referrence it with some dialogue I have with my friends ~~~~

I agree with your take; theistic evolution as a whole as you say takes one pretty far out on a limb.

Further, I do see hints in the Old Test. about "something" of a world we are not fully informed of. I don't know when Angels or the Son's of God and/or Giants and/or Man all walked on Earth, or what that means, or what it means that it seems Lucifer was cast to Earth "before" our Fall, or if that implies something again in that direction.

But I agree with you on the key point of the need for us not to stretch things beyond where the Bible tells us things openly. "Before" the Fall and "After" the New Creation are BOTH only "hinted at" the only difference is we are told outright that what is "After" is beyond what we can ask or even think.

But what was or may have been "Before" changes nothing in my "Now". Just as, what may be or will be "After" the New Creation changes nothing in my "Now". We are given today, and our present condition, and His undeniable Presence with which to deal/interact with this condition of ours. The rest apparently is not critical to our survival as His Children. If it were, Love Himself would I feel provide for His children a Library of Libraries.

Perhaps we are meant to eat first of that Tree called Life, and, only then, of that Tree called Knowledge. And perhaps we've done it the other way around.