Based on the quotations below, Augustine would say creationists and ID proponents are “reckless and incompetent expounders of Scripture” because they turn the Bible into primitive science.
From Peter Enns, Senior Fellow in Biblical Studies at the BioLogos Foundation:
You cannot expect the Bible — written in ancient times for ancient eyes — to enter a modern scientific discussion, and you cannot fault the Bible when it fails to answer our questions.
This is not a new insight. Augustine said famously 1600 years ago that Christians embarrass themselves when they appeal to the Bible to settle scientific matters (cosmology was the issue he was dealing with). Even if many Christians throughout history did assume that the Bible is scientifically accurate, the problems with that position have been understood for a very long time, long before the modern era.
The problems with thinking of the Bible as a science book have been made clearer in recent generations. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, archaeologists unearthed other creations stories from the ancient Mesopotamian world, the same environment that produced the Bible. These discoveries have helped us understand a lot about how creation stories worked in the ancient world.
Ancient peoples did not investigate how things came to be; they assumed that there was a “beginning” when the gods formed the earth, people, animals, trees, etc., as you see them now. You can hardly blame them for making this assumption. The “how” question of creation was settled. They were interested in the “who” question: which of the gods is responsible for all of this? Each society had its own answer to this question, which they told in story form. The biblical story cannot claim a scientific higher ground. It, too, works with ancient themes and categories to tell Israel’s distinct story (qtd. from “Does God Talk to Us Through Fiction? Unpacking a Non-Literal Interpretation of the Bible”).
From St. Augustine:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7] (qtd. from The Literal Meaning of Genesis).
August 8th, 2010 | 6:06 am | #1
The contention of ID, as I understand it, is that natural selection, a purely random, mindless, chance phenomenon, is unable to fully explain the incredible complexity of living organisms. How is that argument foolish or damaging to Christianity? It seems far more foolish for Christians to completely surrender to the contention of Darwinists that the evolution of life was a completely random, chance occurence, wholly explainable by a random tossing of the cosmic dice. This seems to me to be a nullification or at best trivialization of God’s role in the development of the amazing complexity living organisms, a complexity which only becomes more manifest as our scientific knowledge grows. Why should a Christian surrender to an irrational, elitist point of view, that denies God’s essential and indispensible role in the evolution of ourselves and the other living creatures we see about us, simply because that point of view is elitist?
August 8th, 2010 | 7:38 am | #2
Rather than taking a line out of context here is all of 1 Timothy 1:3-11
Lord protect me from deceivers.
I hold to the Word of God as the word of men is not to be trusted.
August 8th, 2010 | 8:59 am | #3
“Dwight Upton
Rather than taking a line out of context here is all of 1 Timothy 1:3-11
Lord protect me from deceivers.
I hold to the Word of God as the word of men is not to be trusted.”
Dear Dwight,
If I were to interpret your post in the strongest sense, I would have a problem, because since, “the word of men is not to be trusted.” That includes the word of Dwight Upton who wrote the post. So, I should not trust the post etc.
But I would be foolish to do that. I know what you mean, and I agree with you. After all, “All Scripture is God-breathed…”.
However the issue is not whether or not one trusts God’s word, I’m sure the bulk of readers of this websight hold the Word reverently. The issue is to interpret it as God wants us to, in a manner that will glorify His truthfulness. We may differ on our interpretations, but we are all in the same family.
August 8th, 2010 | 9:45 am | #4
Darwinian evolution which states that life on earth and humanity basically just happened by a series of random processes is entirely incompatible with Christianity. Any truncated evolution tailored view of God must remove entirely the Christian doctrine of Creation.
I think that this was pretty clear to most Evangelicals in the past, those that wished to opt for evolution devised a form of theistic evolution where God directed the evolutionary process. ID so far as I can see is basically a broad label which can encompass both creationism and theistic evolution.
I am not convinced that a reconciliation between Christian teaching and evolution is either necessary or desirable.
Why should we assume that evolution is the be all and end all of science; in effect making it the only scientific dogma? Look at the predecessor scientific theories such as spontaneous generation which were widely believed in their time. Each predecessor theory was discredited when incompatible information came to light. Why should we assume that evolution is any more accurate that they were?
August 8th, 2010 | 10:26 am | #5
Peter Enns reveals the fatal flaw in his own analysis when he groups Genesis at the same level of truth with “other creations stories.” If it is nothing more than a story, then perhaps he has something to say to us, but he says volumes about his discounting of the scripture as God’s inspired word with his characterization. In so doing, he marginalizes his analysis in my eyes. Either the scriptures are the inspired word of God to be believed regardless of the “logic” of men, or they are all just one other “story” that also leave us no hope for either this world or eternity.
August 8th, 2010 | 11:05 am | #6
Shameless plug time:
Francis J. Beckwith, “Intelligent Design, Thomas Aquinas, and the Ubiquity of Final Causes.” BioLogos Foundation (22 May 2010) Get it here:
http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/beckwith_scholarly_essay.pdf
August 8th, 2010 | 11:29 am | #7
Augustine also said that 6 days was too long a period of time for God to create the universe. So much for science.
August 8th, 2010 | 3:09 pm | #8
YEC advocates are right to advocate for increased fidelity to the integrity of the Scriptures. Fidelity to Scripture is a noble goal.
What’s interesting (and controversial) is the question: “how shall we construe fidelity to Scripture?” Augustine’s insights are especially helpful. Perhaps we need to ask WWAS? (What Would Augustine Say?) Perhaps we should make molded plastic bracelets and hand them out to participants at science and theology conferences, Sunday School classes, and at the hearings of school board meetings embroiled in curricular disputes over YEC and ID and their spurious claims to scientific integrity.
In all seriousness, the issue that Augustine clarifies is the following: it is not being more faithful to the integrity of the Bible to wrench it out of context and make it answer questions it never intended to address.
In our own time, Peter Enns helps carry on the WWAS wisdom by helping us see that more, not less, fidelity to the Bible can be achieved precisely by understanding the way the symbols and stories functioned in the concrete historical setting of Israel in the context of Babylonian creation myths, and later, after the Babylonian exile. Walter Brueggemann and N. T. Wright do much the same.
It is in fact more faithful to use your imagination when imagination is called for rather than search for literal referents in a text. And it is more faithful to see the reality of referents when that is called for. Just as it is more respectful to the speaker of a foreign language to take the time and spend the effort to learn their grammar and syntax in order to understand their language rather than demand that it function like one’s mother-tongue.
We need to back up from the heat of this controversy and reexamine our initial assumptions about the nature and function of the Biblical genre and how we tend to import our concerns.
Thanks for asking WWAS?, Christopher! Let’s start a fad everyone. Please. It’s a sincere request. The culture is watching and waiting for Christians to speak with integrity about the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature.
August 8th, 2010 | 8:15 pm | #9
Didn’t anyone tell Augustinian that ALL the Church Fathers believed in a literal six day creation?
Sheesh. Someone quick correct that guy
August 8th, 2010 | 9:20 pm | #10
Straight to the point: until Augustine offers a reading of Exodus 20 which in some way substantiates his view of Gen 1, may he and his view be at God’s mercy. Because Augustine was not speaking for God but both genesis and Exodus do speak not only for God but as God’s actual word, I put my trust in them and not him, however useful and otherwise-clever he might have been.
August 8th, 2010 | 9:26 pm | #11
Pastor Spooner –
While Dwight’s answer here is a little truncated, your response to him is at least as minimalistic and reductionistic.
Tell me: is a blog post to be trusted above the very word of God? How about a comment in a blog post?
If your answer to both is “no”, then let’s admit the principle Dwight is pointing at and then discuss in some reasonable and faithful way a solution to the problem that science and faith are today at odds.
Why do you think science and faith are at odds — is it all the fault of narrow-minded men of faith? Or is science frankly seeking to overstep it bounds and begin to tell us why things are they way they are rather than just telling us what it observes?
My opinion is that it was a much more useful tool for centuries doing the latter, and it is now a dangerous political weapon as it seeks to do the former.
August 8th, 2010 | 11:14 pm | #12
Joe Cor: certainly the ID “community” desrves credit, for rejecting the complete randomness,and purposelessness that many proponents of biological evolution assert. But it’s also a mistake, to deny the legitimacy of biological evolution, by natural selection. It’s a valid theory. The problem arises, when one makes, as Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Hitchens, and others make, the extrapolation, that therefore no God is necessary. God is necessary to explain all of existence, including the evolutionary process, by way of natural selection. The latter, is merely how God chose to create, or allow his creation to fully emerge. It would be a huge mistake, to provide more fuel to the premise of Dawkins, that evolution somehow “proves” that God does not exist. But that’s precisely, intentionally or not, what ID and creationists are doing, by denying evolution.
Anthony Mator: augustine believed that God existed “outside” so to speak, space and time. Indeed, God created space and time, so it’s incoherent to assert that six days would be “too long” for God to create the universe.
August 8th, 2010 | 11:25 pm | #13
David: the reason that evolution is likely to be unlike the example you cite, is that, biological evolution has a plethera of empirical evidence to support it. True, like any scientific theory, evolution is, in principle, falsifiable. But due to the ample evidence for it, this seems unlikely. The theory that our bodies are made of distinct microscopic cells, is like any scientific theory, falsifiable, but due to the abundant evidence for it, it’s unlikely it will be falsified as well.
The problem is assuming that, evolution by natural selection, means that God is unnecessary. It only means that there’s randomness with the SPHERE of evolution, not outside it. the randomness of evolution no more “proves” God’s nonexistence, than gravity “proves” God’s nonexistence. Gravity was created by God, and natural selection, was created by God.
August 9th, 2010 | 12:37 am | #14
Paul and others constantly pointed out the hubris of so-called science. This is all the corrective I need in order to throw out garbage when I see it today.
Jesus constantly pointed out the hubris of so-called religion, specifically from those who knew the scriptures inside and out and were full of zeal for them. This is all the corrective I need in order to throw out that garbage when I see it today.
God says that his hand even controls the roll of dice. Therefore, there is no such thing as evolution outside of God’s control. However, it still looks just like dice from the outside, and it’s fine for science to say that. It’s also fine for religion to say that things aren’t what they look like from the outside.
August 9th, 2010 | 6:59 am | #15
In the case of ID, Christopher Benson (and apparently Peter Enns) has completely mischaracterized the situation. ID does not turn the Bible into primitive science. It is a scientific venture, not a biblical one. It draws its inferences from natural phenomena.
As I have explained here, it has some congruence with biblical religion in its philosophical grounding and in its suggested outcome, but its methods are those of science.
August 9th, 2010 | 8:22 am | #16
Intelligent Design theory is not based on scripture. In fact, there are individuals from faiths other than Christianity who support ID. How is postulating a First Cause of life and identifying hallmarks of design by an Intelligent Agent using the Bible as a science text? Fallacious argumentation.
August 9th, 2010 | 8:56 am | #17
Benson… Man, just when I think I get where you’re coming from, you throw a curveball.
August 9th, 2010 | 9:07 am | #18
Whoa Christopher,
Have you read the arguments of intelligent design proponents? When I see ID proponents and Creationists lumped together from a Christian, I continually fear that the secular left is winning the war on propaganda.
ID proponents make scientific claims and arguments, evidenced by the fact that its proponents include Deists, Christians, Jews, and others- Anthony Flew is a great example. An ID argument is not a biblical argument or a theological argument, even if those scientific arguments have theological implications.
To pull Augustine into this fight seems a little disingenuous. Quite frankly, “general revelation” in this regard seems to be divided between people who considered all possible hypotheses (ID proponents) and those who prima facie reject certain hypotheses (naturalists reject the evidence for intelligence and complexity in design). There’s no slam dunk here in deciding who owns “general revelation” and its truth.
And besides the fact that we ought to be open and inviting to all possible arguments- which btw is precisely what you say about postmodernism- the arguments for change over time, life from non-life, and the neglect of the obvious difference of humans from the rest of the animal kingdom are weak. Evolutionary principles, even theistic evolution, is weak philosophy.
Consider reading Signs of Intelligence or Darwin’s Black Box.
August 9th, 2010 | 9:26 am | #19
Isn’t Christ the Word of God? Couldn’t every Bible everywhere disintegrate and the reality and vitality and glory of our Lord prevail?
August 9th, 2010 | 10:57 am | #20
Christof: Since I’ve never played baseball, I’m not sure if I’m capable of throwing a curveball. ;-) Oh wait, I interpreted the words literally when they should have been interpreted figuratively. Hmm… who else does that?
David Strunk: It’s nice to hear from you. Creationists and Christian ID proponents can be “lumped together” because, in Peter Enns’ words, they “share naïve views of what the Bible ‘ought’ to be, namely the notion that if the Bible is really the ‘Word of God,’ it will provide accurate historical and scientific information.” From their perspective, “If the Bible is not historically, even scientifically, accurate, then God is a ‘liar’ and there is no reason to trust him. The Word of God cannot make such huge factual errors. Based on this assumption, the scientific evidence is either ignored, marginalized, selectively appealed to, or re-interpreted to ease the tension.”
I share Enns’ view:
Where you say “ID proponents make scientific claims and arguments,” I reply that they are engaged in Marilynne Robinson calls “parascience,” defined here by David Bentley Hart as “a form of discourse whose rather grand, frequently incoherent, and usually irreducibly metaphysical assertions about the nature of the universe, the self, the genealogy of morality, and so on, masquerade as purely scientific claims.” The following resource was very instructive for me:
Pulling “Augustine into this fight” seems appropriate because he understood in his time what we should understand in our time: the creation story in Genesis should not be interpreted as primitive science. To do so is to wrench the words out of its immediate context and historical context, ignoring the genre of theological poetry (cf. Tremper Longman, Walter Brueggemann).
You say “we ought to be open and inviting to all possible arguments” but then conclude “evolutionary principles, even theistic evolution, is weak philosophy.” Is that openness? My exposure to creationists and ID proponents leaves me with the strong impression that their arguments are not only bad science but also bad hermeneutics and bad theology. When wrong questions are posed to Scripture, wrong answers inevitably result.
As I said in my previous post, “The Future of the Science and Religion Debate,” Christians can achieve a “synthetic middle ground” in the debate if they get a better handle on the vocations of science and religion and a more robust doctrine of creation.
August 9th, 2010 | 12:46 pm | #21
Dear Anthony Mator: You wrote, “Augustine also said that 6 days was too long a period of time for God to create the universe. So much for science.”
In context, doesn’t Augustine mean by this that since God does not inhabit time in the same way we do, He did not create THIS on one day and then THIS 24 hours later, etc.?
For God to take a “week” to accomplish something is, precisely, “too long a period of time.” If God exists outside of time, all of creation was accomplished outside of time as well–even though it then unfolds within time. I think that is Augustine’s point.
August 9th, 2010 | 6:37 pm | #22
Professor Beckwith: I just discovered today that you’re a participant with BioLogos Forum. Excellent! Thanks for alerting us to your paper.
August 9th, 2010 | 9:23 pm | #23
Christopher,
You are one of my favorite people to read on this world wide web because you always bring arguments and never seem overly emotive or irrational. Just want you to know that I appreciate that and that your efforts don’t go unnoticed.
I do, however, strongly disagree with your assertion about ID. The implications of irreducible complexity, reverse engineering, and physics (heck, doesn’t the second law of thermodynamics point pretty strongly to a creation point?), and other scientific endeavors cannot possibly qualify as parascience. It’s an interesting parry, but I think the parascience claim falls flat if one actually reads the prolific writings of ID proponents. They’re doing science and real research, it’s just that they get shut out of academic journals because Darwinian naturalism has a tight hold on the flow of information.
I appreciate your rigorous look at proper biblical interpretation, but if Jesus thought Adam and Eve were real people (and I think this is a necessary orthodox position), then that’s good enough for me. He’s omniscient, after all. Longman tries to deal with this argument, but it’s weak.
I do not read Genesis 1 literally, but there’s not just 2 options: theistic evolution or 6-day creationism. I do read it as poetry that expresses simple creation fact: God created, it was orderly, and people are fundamentally different (different in degree and not just in kind) than everything else that is created. Theistic evolution can’t account for that simple observation. Humans are really really different from gorillas.
I could write so much more but I suppose we need to have that coffee. ;)
August 9th, 2010 | 9:29 pm | #24
Christopher,
One more thing- I’ve done some serious study on various systematic doctrines, one being inerrancy/infallibility.
It seems like Enns is promoting a view of the Bible which defines inerrancy in terms of simple theology but rejects biblical veracity in the field of science (and usually by extension this includes history, archaeology, or fields of popular human secular study). This was certainly a liberal view, promoted in the 19th century, of the Bible that paved the way for many other ways to start distrusting the Bible.
Millard Erickson’s simple definition of inerrancy is simply that the Bible is truthful in all that it affirms.
These are two separate views. You seem to be taking the second view at times, merely stating that what Gen. 1 is affirming is different from a traditional interpretation. But Enns seems to be discounting the enterprise altogether, preferring rather to label various ways in which the Bible is authoritative and which ways it isn’t.
Do you disagree with Enns on this point or agree? It really really does matter, I think.
August 9th, 2010 | 11:34 pm | #25
Dave Strunk: I’ve responded to Mr. Turk and Mr. Drake with no dialectical progress because of their entrenchment. You, however, continue to be a worthy dialogue-partner. There’s a genuine back-and-forth between us.
Let me begin with some generalizations, keenly aware that generalizations always risk oversimplification. Nevertheless, we humans seem incapable of living without generalization. So, here’s how I would generalize the three camps and their relation to science:
• The creationist camp disregards science.
• The ID camp distorts science.
• Darwinists (or naturalists) idolize science.
Notice, there’s a fourth camp missing here. For lack of a better term, we’ll call this the “via media” (middle way) camp, positioned between the creationist pole that disregards science and the Darwinist pole that idolizes science. Karl Giberson says this camp simultaneously embraces “a science shorn of its over-reaching scientism and a faith freedom from a simplistic biblical literalism.”
BioLogos, another name for “via media,” “takes both the Bible and science seriously, and seeks a harmony between them that respects the truth of each. By using appropriate biblical and theological scholarship BioLogos believes that the apparent conflicts that lead some to reject science and others to reject the Bible can be avoided.” The big names in this camp include Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, Kenneth Miller, Alister McGrath, Howard Van Till, Timothy Keller. Because we’re both Presbyterians, you’d care to know that Van Till and Keller are in the Reformed tradition.
It seems that the two of us belong here because we agree on at least two points: (1) Gen. 1 cannot be read as a literal account; and (2) the purpose of Gen. 1 is to proclaim the supremacy of Yahweh in the pagan world, not to communicate historical and scientific fact.
This “via media” camp is not necessarily committed to theistic evolution. See the following articles:
How is BioLogos different from Theistic Evolution, Intelligent Design and Creationism?
What role could God have in evolution?
At what point in the evolutionary process did humans attain the “Image of God”?
Did evolution have to result in human beings?
To be clear, I’m still in the early stages of exploring theistic evolution and its implications for Christian faith. So far, I’m sympathetic to the position as I understand it.
I agree that orthodox Christianity requires us to affirm the historical Adam, but I’m not aware that theistic evolution requires its denial. Here’s the official position at BioLogos: “Although BioLogos takes a firm stand on the fact that Adam and Eve could not have been the sole biological progenitors of all humans, science does not rule out the possibility of a historical Adam and Eve.” Go to the BioLogos Forum website and enter “Adam” in the search window and several articles will appear. I’ll highlight one article below:
How does the Fall fit into evolutionary history? Were Adam and Eve historical figures?
August 9th, 2010 | 11:49 pm | #26
“Adam and Eve could not have been the sole biological progenitors of all humans, science does not rule out the possibility of a historical Adam and Eve.”
I’m confused. (no kidding).
So how then can Eve be said to have been the “mother of all living”?
August 10th, 2010 | 2:48 am | #27
Daryl, the bible also says that “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” However, the Holy Spirit has taught the church that universalism is not true.
Therefore, the Holy Spirit teaches the church that “straightforward” readings of our God-given text are not the definition of orthodoxy.
Correct interpretations come from the Holy Spirit. Honestly, they don’t even come from “the proper hermeneutic” or “a proper understanding of the literal sense of the author”, or any number of otherwise prudent ideas.
Children and the simple-minded benefit (i.e. are saved) by straightforward readings, because God is pleased to make learning look foolish. However, grown ups have to build upon those childish readings–not discarding them, but learning how deep an unfathomable are the truths behind them.
This is scary territory for the orthodox, because we all know that the demons love to say things like “move beyond the text” and “interpretive arc”, etc. However, Satan doesn’t attack us with unique methods. He just co-opts what is true. This should keep us from taking reactionary positions because of the unbelief of the liberals.
August 10th, 2010 | 2:56 am | #28
David Strunk– although I agree with you (and Jesus) that Adam and Eve were historical, I must point out to you that the idea that Jesus was omniscient in the flesh during the reign of Augustus is completely heterodox (Matt 24).
I know, this is crazy-talk. But Jesus didn’t even think of himself as good (Mark 10:18). More crazy-talk. However, the bible is what it is, and I’d urge you to take it literally ;-)
August 11th, 2010 | 11:00 am | #29
Hey Marinealach,
I’d also say that to claim Jesus lived without the full use of all of the Trinity’s attributes is also heterodox. I’m not sure of your thetological background, but I affirm that Jesus, even on earth, shared all the divine attributes that the Father and Holy Spirit did and do.
So what to do with the Olivet discourse and Philippians 2? The kenosis of Jesus means that in some instances, and at some times, Jesus voluntarily gave up the use of some of the divine attributes. He, for instance, wasn’t omnipresent in the flesh, but he could have been. And in Matthew 24, he could choose to be omniscient regarding his return, but chose to give up the use of that omniscience, even though he retained it in character. To claim that Matthew 24 is a statement against any of Jesus’ omniscience is also to contradict Scripture, as evidenced of Jesus’ supernatural “seeing” of Nathanial in John 1.
So to review: since Jesus was at the Creation and performing it and all (Colossians 1), I think it’s reasonable to assume his omniscience while on earth, regarding this issue, is solid.
But this is way off topic, so I’ll quit.
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