Month: May 2018

The central question on Adam: who is the authority?

The central question on Adam: who is the authority?

As in the Reformation, so now in the theistic evolution challenge, behind the questions of interpretation of Biblical and creation givens, is the question of final authority. The Catholics put tradition above the Bible, even while quoting the Bible; Luther and Calvin put the Bible above tradition, even while diligently studying the Church Fathers such as Chrysostom and Augustine. Theistic evolutionists put “the sure results of science” above the Bible, even while saying they honor the Bible; the creationists put the Bible above “the sure results of science,” while at the same time diligently searching creation and seeing that everywhere it confirms the Bible.

 Daniel Harlow is re-interpreting Genesis because of “the sure results of science”. In his Perspectives article, he says “the hominid fossil record unmistakably shows….”, and “ molecular biology indicates.. the present human population cannot possibly be traced back to a single couple”. In other words molecular biology has more certainty than the very words of Jesus who as Creator of Adam and Eve speaks of their historical existence “in the beginning of creation”. Matt. 19, Mark 10. Dr. Harlow in essence thinks that man’s origin science is infallible, but the Bible is not infallible. He made this claim that the Bible is not infallible in an article that is found on this page. It is no longer to be found on the Calvin Chimes site starting a year ago. It was a letter written to the Calvin Chimes. He even is so bold as to claim that the CRC agrees that the Bible is not infallible.

 As to what the CRC believes about infallibility, I offer first my own experience about this and then an examination of what CRC people have actually written on it.

 When I was at Calvin College in my senior year (58-59), Marv Hoogland, a first year Calvin Sem student wrote an article for Stromata, the Calvin Sem student publication, denying the infallibility of the Bible. See under “infallibility question” in this history of the CRC lecture by Swierenga, given in South Africa: http://www.swierenga.com/Africa_pap.html). Hoogland’s article was a bombshell at the time, and caused a huge uproar in the Banner, in faculty, among students, because the CRC did indeed teach that the Bible was infallible not only in matters of doctrine and morals, but in history and science. So important was the teaching of infallibility that the infallibility was very first thing that Dr. Anthony Hoekema, our theology professor at Calvin Seminary opened his theology course with on September 1 of 1959 in my freshman year at Calvin Seminary. (Swierenga is wrong on Hoekema’s view). Hoekema gave us a month of Biblical proofs of infallibility and of refutations of what Marv Hoogland wrote. He required each of us to read Benjamin Warfield’s 400 page book, the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture. Dr. Hoekema gave multitudes of examples from church history where sceptics had thought the Bible was in error, only to be shown by further study that it was not.

 For example sceptics had asked: Was the blind man healed as Jesus entered Jericho or as he left Jericho? On the surface it seems that two Gospel authors contradict. But no, there were two cities next to each other called Jericho, and one author was thinking of the old Jericho and the other of the new Jericho.

 Sceptics had asked: Was the author who describes the circumference and the diameter of the laver which Solomon built for the temple not wrong about “pi”, because it doesn’t come out to 3.1416. On the first reading, it may seem so. But no, the walls of the laver were thick, and the diameter given measured the distance between the inside to inside walls; whereas the circumference given measured around the outside wall, not the inside wall.

 Yes, there are still some things we haven’t fully understood, but shall we judge God and say he allowed his Holy Spirit to guide error, when the problem could well be our own lack of knowledge of history, geography, or the Spirit’s intent?

 If Dr. Harlow is correct that the CRC no longer teaches the Bible’s infallibility, then I would like to know what Synod decided that. He appeals to report 44 of the synod of 1972 which can be read at the following :

 http://www.crcna.org/site_uploads/uploads/resources/synodical/Acts1972_nature.pdf

which dealt with this question at great length. When this report discusses the history of Genesis 3, it totally rejected the view of Daniel Harlow. (see page 531 and 532 of that report)

Some CRC leaders believe in the infallibility of the Bible as indicated by the signers of the Chicago Statement on Infallibility, which states the case exactly as I was taught at Calvin Seminary in the late 50’s.

Daniel Harlow states that the great church leaders never taught infallibility. That is patently false as Benjamin Warfield shows in quoting Luther, Calvin, and others, going back to early church history. In 2013 Dick Gaffin put together a book of 1400 pages quoting Reformers and creeds from the 1500’s to the present, proving that they did indeed believe and teach infallibility. So Daniel Harlow is wrong.

Daniel Harlow in his Chimes article mentions 2 “factual errors in the Bible”, 1) Daniel 5 wrong about Belshazzar, and 2) Luke 2 wrong about Quirinius’ census.

Concerning Belshazzar being Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, not his son as Daniel 5:2, 11, and 18 calls him, the answer is: the courtezans call Nebuchadnezzar “your father” meaning “your ancestor” or “your grandfather”, in order to give great honer to Belshazzar. There are times when the Bible uses son to mean grandson, and father to mean grandfather. (See Matt 1) Since the courtezans and Daniel actually addressed Belshazzar, by calling Nebuchadnezzar “your father”, then the Holy Spirit is not in error here. These people knew all three kings and all agreed in saying father. Moreover although Prof Harlow claims that Belshazzar was not king of Babylon there is a tablet giving the annals of Belshazzar’s father Nabonidos which says that Belshazzar was left as king in Babylon while Nabonidos went out to meet Cyrus. See the Jewish historian Alfred Edersheim, Bible History, The Babylonian Empire, page 201.

Concerning the claim that Quirinius was only involved in an AD census, not a BC census because Josephus speaks only of the AD census, all the study Bible notes (NIV, ESV, Reformation Study Bibles) give a good answer, and the commentator Lenski, shows that Quirinius was governing in the BC time as well. Lenski observes that Luke was born around the time of Quirinius whereas Josephus was born in 37 or 38 AD, so maybe Josephus had inaccurate information because he was 40 years later. To assume that Josephus or some other Roman author has more infallibility than Luke who was guided by the Holy Spirit is to assume that an America living 2000 years later knows more than an eyewitness yea more than the Holy Spirit. I just don’t want to go there. Shall we call such an attack intellectual pride or what?

I have here investigated Harlow’s two examples just to illustrate what Prof. Hoekema of Calvin Seminary taught us in 1959: those things that the sceptics call errors are errors in our understanding, and in extremely very rare occasions errors of textual transmission or translation, but not errors of the Holy Spirit. Moreover if we don’t have a clear answer now to some Bible difficulty, let’s be humble enough to admit our own ignorance rather than accuse God of lying.

In the ASA Perspectives article Dr. Harlow treats Genesis 1-11 as though it is somehow related to or even partly dependent on Babylonian creation and flood myths. Genesis is one of my two favorite books in the Old Testament and I taught 100’s of hours from it in my courses in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Dr. Harlow’s perspective is so contrary to the text of Genesis.

 Why? The very structure of Genesis as a collection of 11 little books militates against any influence of Babylon or Egypt in the writing of those first 11 chapters. Genesis 5:1 uses the word “book” thus indicating that Genesis is a collection of genealogy books, not genealogy legends passed by mouth to mouth with loss of truth in the transmission. The first three genealogy books were written far before the very existence of either Babylon or Egypt. (the first three books were about flood and pre-flood times, Babylon and Egypt are nations arising from Noah’s sons AFTER the flood). Genesis 5:1 says “this is the BOOK of the generations of Adam.” The Hebrew word for book here is “sepher”, a word used around 150 times in the Hebrew Bible and every time meaning something written such as letter of instruction, written order, written decree, legal document, certificate of divorce, deed of purchase, scroll, book of prophecies, genealogical record, register, law-book, book of kings, record-book, etc.

 Gen 5:1 is therefore contrary to what my Denver Christian school teacher taught us back in the 40’s, when she said that writing was not invented till around the time of Moses. Now we know from archaeology that writing goes back to early Egypt, to before the time of Abraham. And Genesis 5:1 tells us that writing goes even back to the time of Adam. It is only our Western pride beginning especially with the Enlightenment (oops, the Endarkenment) that we think writing had to take so many 10’s of thousands of years to develop. The Endarkenment convinced even some Christians that man has slowly progressed from those mythological slow monkey-like idiot ancestors, who took so many thousands of years to invent writing.

No, Adam and his descendants could write, and the book of the generations of Adam (Genesis 5:1-6:8) the book of the generations of Noah (Gen 6:9- 9:28), the generations book of Gen. 2:4- 4: 26, and all the other books of generations of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob all were collected by Joseph perhaps, later edited by Moses, but all written by the guidance of the Holy Spirit by people who lived through the events, and are not corrupted by the silly myths of the Babylonians. Whatever slim similarities there are to Babylonian god and goddess fights, Dr. Harlow is forcing these similarities in his charts in the Perspectives article.

These so-called similarities have been criticized by many authors, such as John Collins, in his book Did Adam and Eve Really Exist, and it would take too long to point these out here. If there are superficial similarities, they are because the Babylonians, (living from 400 to 2000 years after the first 9 chapters of Genesis were written) are taking God’s Holy Spirit truths found in Genesis available to them in some form no doubt, and distorting them into myths that fit their silly human like gods. It is false to claim that God’s people like Moses, or Ezra, listened to their silly stories and turned them into the book of Genesis. You only have to read the Gilgamesh epic for yourself to see how ridiculous is the claim of Dr. Harlow. We had to read the Gilgamesh epics ourselves for courses at Westminster on Genesis and groaned upon learning that liberal Christian theologians were saying such unintelligent stuff. C S. Lewis dismissed this stuff back in the 1940’s

As for so much weight lately given to the latest “infallible science of the genome” there are two excellent books that came out in the past three years that show the scientific problems with such trust. One of them is Science and Human Origins (2012) by three experts in fossils and genes; the other is Should Christians Embrace Evolution (2009) by 14 British theologians and scientists. Both show a lot of problems with claiming that chimpanzee and human genomes are so much alike. The first shows how there are no missing links between monkey and man.

When Francis Crick first worked on gene analysis some 30 years ago he claimed that a huge number of genes were junk, were remnants of evolutionary past that no longer function in producing a person. Now in the past 5 years, 80 per cent of what was called junk is now seen to have an important function.

For years the evolutionist claimed that we have some 70 or 80 vestigial organs, from tonsils to appendix, and that these were leftovers from evolution. Now all of these have been shown to have an important function, and doctors don’t remove the tonsils nearly as quickly as when I was a boy and had mine removed at age 6.

 At the Scopes trial, in 1925, Clarence Darrow, the evolutionist claimed that science had clearly proven that man comes from a monkey because of two clear proofs of a missing link: Piltdown man and Nebraska Man.

 But in 1953, Piltdown man was shown to be a deliberate fraud, in which Dawson who lived close to Piltdown, England secretly took the skull of a human, and the jaw of an ape, filed down the teeth of the ape, used acid to make the bones look old, buried them, and then guided some unsuspecting anthropologists into the gravel near Piltdown to discover this great finding in 1912.

 Nebraska Man which consisted only of one tooth at the time of the Scopes trial was shown to be the tooth of an extinct pig when they found a complete skeleton in another place in Nebraska, and a few years ago it was discovered that this pig exists today in the jungles of So America and was never extinct. So much for the “sure findings of science.” The DVD “the origins of man” which exposes how many of the hominid ancestors are merely apes shows how silly it is to say that “the hominid fossil record unmistakably shows…” There are even dozens of atheist evolutionists who would not say this fossil record is so unmistakable. You can find this in the Origins book which is mainly quotes from evolutionists who in many cases destroy their own case by the evidence they admit.

 Another weakness in his trust in science is a serious failure to distinguish between operation science and historical or origin science. Operation science looks at things that can be repeated in experiments, can be observed over and over in all parts of the world, such as testing gravity, studying disease, or how electrons work. This has given rise to computers, space shuttles and cures for disease. Historical or origin science attempts to discover truth about the past by examining reliable eyewitness testimony if available, or circumstantial evidence such as pottery, fossils, and canyons. Because the past cannot be observed directly, assumptions greatly affect how these scientists interpret what they see. The debate between creationists and theistic evolutionists is not about operation science, which is based on the present. The debate is about origin science and conflicting assumptions or beliefs about the past.

 In one sense the origin of the earth science is not really science, because creation cannot be repeated, we cannot make an experiment over and over and watch how it happened. We really need an eyewitness who saw it happen and only God is that eyewitness, and he has graciously told us in the Bible’s most fundamental book, Genesis, not only that he did it, but when he did it and how he did it. That’s the historical science (science is simply the Latin word for knowledge) that I trust: God’s testimony of the true history, and God never lies.

 The musings of Gary from the heart.

Biologos – its history and teaching

The following is the history of Biologos, followed by an analysis of its anti-Scriptural teaching.

Biologos – its history and teaching 

Founder and leaders:
The Biologos Foundation was established by Francis Collins in 2007.  Biologos aims to contribute to the discussion on the relationship between science and religion and emphasizes a compatibility between science and the Christian faith.

Francis Collins served as its president until he resigned on August 16, 2009 to become the 16th director of the National Institutes of Health.  His position was taken by Darrel Falk, who led until 2012.  Since 2013  it has been  led by Deborah Haarsma, professor of Physics at Calvin College.

Francis Collins’ biography, conversion, and mission
Collins was raised in a nominally Christian home, but by graduate school he considered himself to be an atheist. However, dealing with dying patients led him to question his atheism, and reading C.S. Lewis he eventually became an “Evangelical Christian.”  He has described himself as a “serious Christian”.  For that reason several atheists strongly opposed Obama’s choosing of Collins to head the National Institutes of Health.

Collins is most famous for being head of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and for this work was named  “one of America’s Best Leaders”  He helped isolate genes for cystic fibrosis,  Huntington’s disease, neurofibromatosis, and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1.

In 2006 he wrote The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Here he states that scientific discoveries are an “opportunity to worship.”  In this book he also rejects “Young Earth Creationism” and “intelligent design.”  He calls his belief “theistic evolution” or “evolutionary creationism.”

He holds a pro-life view of the abortion issue,  and in an interview with Scientific American stated that life begins at conception.

He considers “agnosticism”  as  a “cop-out”,  saying “I see a lot of agnosticism in the  scientific community, which has not been arrived at by a careful examination of the evidence. I went through a  phase like that also, as a casual agnostic.”

Since Collins calls  “intelligent design” science “just ludicrous”, he was not asked to participate in the Ben Stein film  Expelled: no Intelligence Allowed.  He calls it ludicrous, because he so fervently believes in evolution.

Collins founded  Biologos because  after writing  The language of God: a Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” ,  he got thousands of e-mails from people, some troubled, many excited, many puzzled, who wanted to further discussion.  He could not keep up with those letters, so he set up a Website which he called “BioLogos.” So he distilled answers into several essays which he put on the web.  Many others now write for the site who are in agreement.

He gave the site the name  “BioLogos”  from two Greek words,  and quoting Collins: “Bios is Greek for life, which God spoke into being  and Logos from John 1:1,  in the beginning was the Word (Logos in Greek).”

Funding for BioLogos
The main source of funding for the site and for promoting Biologos teaching is the Templeton foundation.  The Templeton Foundation has over a billion dollars,  and in 2007  Pamela Thompson, its vice president for communications said “the foundation has provided tens of millions of dollars in support of research academics who are critical of the Intelligent Design position and who are critical of all anti-evolutionists.”  The head of the Templeton Foundation is Jack Templeton, a PCA elder, son of  Sir John Templeton.  Jack says he subscribes to the Westminster Confession of Faith.  Reports are that he has given 9 million dollars to further BioLogos, and 6 million to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Both of these are strong proponents of evolution and billions of years.

This Templeton influence through Biologos may soon be coming to a church near you.  They had a 5 week presentation at my daughter’s CRC church in Grand Rapids.  According to the Templeton Foundation,  its  “Science for Ministry Initiative invites organizations to develop programs that will help ministers and the congregations they serve to move away from simplistic ‘solutions’ to the tensions between science and faith.” The Foundation does not state exactly what the simplistic and polarizing views are;  but we will soon see from Biologos teaching that they oppose reading Genesis 1-11 as straight history, in which God reveals how long he took to create,  how many years there were between Adam and Abraham, how He created the plant and animal kinds suddenly without intermediate slow development, and how he created Adam from the dust, not from previous animals.

Writers for Biologos who agree with many of its ideas are:
1) Peter Enns, from time to time, professor of Old Testament at Princeton, Harvard,  Fuller, Eastern U.  During his 14 years as professor at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia (1994-2008), he wrote Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the OT (2005), teaching 1) strong similarities between the OT and the lit. of other ancient societies, 2) theological diversity among OT authors,  and 3) how NT writers interpreted the OT in inventive ways to reflect Jewish practices of the time.  He argues for an “incarnational” understanding of the Bible because the Bible behaves in ways that don’t seem very “inspired” but rather very “human.”  For these views, the board of Westminster Sem. dismissed him in 2008, saying his views contradicted the Westminster confessions of the 1600’s. Enns then became Senior Fellow of Biblical Studies with the Biologos Foundation,  writing nearly 100 blog posts on the BioLogos Forum called “Science and the Sacred”.  In 2012 he wrote The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins. He recently published home school materials on Genesis and the Old Testament, so home schoolers should recognize that not all home school materials will build up the faith of our precious children.

2) Bruce Waltke, professor OT and Hebrew at Dallas, Regent College, Westminster Sem in Philadelphia, Reformed Sem in Orlando, and now Knox Sem. He has written several books and commentaries, and was editor for the OT part of the New Geneva Study Bible. In 2010 while professor at Reformed Thological Sem, he was asked to resign because he advocated that evolution and Christianity were compatible in a video put on the Biologos Foundation’s website.  Ironically he was then hired at Knox Seminary, the one founded  in 1989 by James Kennedy(1930-2007),  ironic because  Dr. Kennedy was a super active opponent of evolution and promoter of Young Earth Creation.

3)  Karl Giberson, once theVice President of BioLogos,  professor at Eastern Nazarene college (1984-2011)  author of Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution,called “one of the best books of 2008” by the Washington Post, and author of Worlds Apart: the Unholy War between Religion and Science”,used in various evangelical colleges to counter Christian Fundamentalist approaches to “origins”.

4)  Tim Keller, pastor in a Manhattan PCA church in New York, considered the PCA’s best known pastor, author of Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (2008), named book of the year by World Mag in 2008, hosted three meetings of Biologos type speakers at the Harvard Club in New York,  in Nov 2009, Nov 2010 and March 2012, calling them “A Theology of Celebration”.  A  report of the third meeting on The Biologos Foundation website bemoans the fact that almost half of America’s pastors hold or strongly lean toward a belief in a universe less than 10,000 years old, and the participants left with a cry for such ignorant church people they deeply love being so out of it, since there is such scientific certainty of an old earth. Some of the 70 participants were N.T. Wright, (Evangelical Anglican bishop from England  and author of  The resurrection of Jesus),  John Walton of Wheaton, and Allister McGrath of England.(Irish theologian and author of Dawkins’ Delusion)

Recently Tim Keller argued against the Biologos view that Adam and Eve never existed for which he was sternly reprimanded by the Biologos president, Deborah Haarsma.

5)  Ralph Davis, NW College (Orange City) professor of Biology,  father of one of my violin students, who not only supports BioLogos  ideas but told me that those who teach Young Earth Creationism  will prevent unbelievers from coming to Christ, because the unbeliever will be offended at our ignorance of the facts of science.  Many BioLogos writers are saying the same thing.

6)  Two theology professors at Calvin College:  John Schneider and Daniel Harlow.  These men published articles in the American Scientific Affiliation’s (ASA) journal Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith  (2010) questioning the existence of Adam and Eve, whether there was a literal fall into sin, and suggesting the Reformed confessions are in conflict with recent scientific discoveries.

The president of Calvin, now retired, opposed their views, and within a year John Schneider requested an early retirement, which the college granted.  Calvin’s academic dean said “the report that Schneider was pressured to resign was not true, but that he chose to request retirement on terms that reflected his love and respect for the college.”

But Harlow who still teaches at Calvin said the dean’s report is not true  and that John was pressured to leave.  Harlow said, “He was pressured by the president and to avoid a lawsuit and negative publicity, the college cut a deal with John’s lawyer.”  On the blogs in the Banner, several people criticize Calvin’s president for not allowing academic freedom, while others approve.

One of the bloggers saw hypocrisy in the dismissal, quoting from Calvin College’s  biology department’s open advocacy of evolution.  This advocacy is found in their one page document of Feb 4, 2011 Perspectives on Evolution which states:  “We accept the biological theory of evolution (descent with modification over time) to be the best explanation for understanding the diversity and commonality seen among all living creatures on Earth.  We find the evidence in support of this theory to be convincing….

“The theory of evolution is one of biology’s key unifying principles.  It integrates and explains observations in all areas of biology, including the DNA sequences in genomes of creatures past and present, ………….  We Believe God brings forth the creation through evolutionary means…..  We affirm the scientific consensus that life has existed on Earth for billions of years and that it has changed, and continues to change over time. …. To proceed in any other way ..would be a disservice.”

What follows is a link to the one page Calvin College Perspectives on Evolution paper written in part by Deborah Haarsma.   https://calvin.edu/academics/departments-programs/biology/about/mission/evolution-statement.pdf

The Christian community needs to know more about these developments, lest it be surprised if these ideas show up in our own CRC publications.  Well, they already have. In the Banner of  May 3, 2013, Pastor Walhout affirms no Adam and Eve, no original sin, and evolution as fact.  Here is the link:

https://www.thebanner.org/features/2013/05/tomorrow-s-theology
A more complete defense of the Biologos view that there was no Adam and Eve and no original sin is defended by Calvin theology professor,  Daniel Harlow, in the 2010 ASA journal , found on the internet through the following link:  https://asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2010/PSCF9-10Harlow.pdf

I invite you to print this and then compare it to what I have summarized below to see if I have misquoted or misunderstood.

Summary of Harlow’s ASA paper:

(In the following, page #’s are followed by column # (1 or2) and paragraph # (1,2,3,4)

1. Human beings did not appear suddenly but evolved over 150,000 years or more. Page 180, c1, p1
2. Humans cannot be traced back to Adam and Eve. Page 180, c1, p1
3.Genesis chapters 1-3 are not a factual account of human origins.  Gen. 1-11 are story, not history.  Page 182, c 1, p 2
4. The authors of Genesis 1-11 borrow and transform pagan myths as proved by page 182, c1, last p through page 184
5.Humans did not arise in a paradise or in perfect moral perfection.  page 188, c 2, last p.
6.The first sin was not disobedience to a revealed law page 180, c.1, last p.
7. The argument that animals did not die before the fall is obviously false, even though Gen 1 states that animals before the fall were to eat vegetables, because Ps 104:2 and Job 38:39-41 indicate that the act of animal’s eating one another is viewed positively by God. Page 188, c2, p2
8. What we call sin is simply man’s inheritance of the selfish nature in animals, the selfish instinct of the survival of the fittest. Sin is the by-product of millions of years of evolution.  P 191, c 2 last p
9. The genealogies of Gen. 5 and 10 and 11 are not historical but are part of the culture of the Near East written with exaggerated ages to assert the superiority of primeval times to the present. Page 187 c 1, p.2, Page 187, c2, p1
10. The idea of original sin that the church has taken from Gen. Chapters 1-3 is not found in Genesis, but comes from an interpretation of Paul and especially from Augustine in the West.  Page 189, paragraph 2; Page 187, c2, last p.
11. If we don’t follow Augustine, sin may be viewed as a fall up, not a fall away. Page 188, c. 2, last p. page 189, c 1, p. 1
12. The word sin is not found in Gen. 3 page 189 c2, p2
13. Adam and Eve are not referred to again in the O T, so their disobedience was not considered important. Page 181, c 2, p 3
14. It may seem then that God is the author of human sin, for He let evolution develop in this dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest, self-interest manner. But that is not the case.  Page 192, first paragraph etc.
15. Christ’s death must then be viewed with a different theory. Not the substitutionary theory, but the Christus victor theory and the moral influence theory. (The moral influence theory goes something like this: Jesus died forgiving his enemies, trusting in God and the resurrection, not reviling when reviled, as an example to influence us in a moral way. Page 192, c1, p 2)
16. We must revise our classical doctrines because new scientific findings in molecular biology, primatology, sociobiology, and phylogenetics are so sure. This revision will help us speak meaningfully to our age. Page 192, c. 1, last p.

Analysis of Daniel Harlow’s ASA  article.
by Wayne Spencer, edited by Gary Vander Hart

When you read writings from scholars who believe some form of Theistic Evolution,  they often start their comments or finish their comments with something about how science has “thoroughly demonstrated evolution.”  Harlow begins his paper about evolutionary science like that: “The ever-growing hominid fossil record unmistakably shows that human beings did not appear suddenly but evolved gradually over the course of six million years.” This statement is grossly incorrect.  The science on the alleged evolution of man, called paleoanthropology,  is full of mistakes, sloppy research, unrealistic conclusions, and sometimes outright fraud. This area of research is one of the worst examples of bad science and dishonest science.  Not all paleontologists do such bad work but the alleged evidence for the evolution of man is very misleading. The dishonesty is made clear in the book  Bones of Contention by Lubenow.

Harlow argues that Adam and Eve were only literary figures, not real people. But before he spells out his view of Adam and Eve, he points out that mathematical models from scientific studies of genetics will say that the first fully modern humans came out of an “interbreeding population” of about 10,000 individuals. So modern evolutionary science is saying that our species, homo sapiens, could not have come from one pair of individuals.

I don’t see wisdom in basing ones theology on the latest study of genetics. In 2005  a genome study claimed that chimpanzee and human genes were 98% alike, but in 2013 a study said they are 70% alike.  https://answersingenesis.org/answers/research-journal/v6/comprehensive-analysis-of-chimpanzee-and-human-chromosomes/  Wait a few years and we’ll have a different study.  What foolishness to pin your theology on such fast changing studies.

Harlow clearly rejects the concept of original sin, that all of us have inherited a sinful nature from Adam and Eve. He says, “a range of evidence establishes that virtually all of the acts considered ‘sinful’ in humans are part of the natural repertoire of behavior among animals . . . .”  He goes on to list sinful behaviors that animals could be said to exhibit, such as theft, deception, rape, murder, infanticide, and others.  I don’t dispute that animals do these things after the curse.  But  before the curse things were different. Animals had only green things to eat, not each other. Gen 1:30.  Harlow doesn’t seem to acknowledge that sin changed the world. But it clearly did change it according to  Genesis 3:17.  God tells Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you….”  Gen. 3 goes on to explain the difficulties that man would have  because of his sin.  Harlow does not comment on this verse in the paper. Both the animal world and human experience were changed by Adam and Eve’s sin in the beginning.  So the world is not so good as it once was.  In addition, if we did not inherit a sinful nature, then why was the virgin conception of Jesus necessary?  Jesus had to be of human lineage so he could represent us in death and yet not inherit the sin nature we have. Thus without original sin, the basis of Jesus’ work for us is undermined.

If what Harlow says is true, why couldn’t people say “Well, it’s not my fault, my animal ancestry made me do it!”  Where does this leave our moral responsibility for sin? Harlow does seem to acknowledge that humans sin, but he tries to make sin something we somehow got from our evolution from lower animals. In other words, we essentially inherited our sinful nature from animals, not from Adam and Eve! Harlow goes on to say “Only over time would they have developed a sufficient spiritual awareness to sense that many selfish behaviors are contrary to God’s will, and the moral imperative to transcend those behaviors. Secular scientists would say the idea of a “moral imperative”  is inconsistent with evolution. Evolution reduces human behavior to being due to genetics and our environment, where “environment” can include both our physical environment and our “psycho-social” environment. How could humans, which are moral creatures made in God’s image, evolve from amoral creatures (animals) not made in God’s image?  How did humans come to be in God’s image, if humans evolved?  Harlow does not explain the origins of “a moral imperative” or of  how man “became” God’s image.” Evolution has long been used to justify sinful behavior.  Harlow comes very close to this.  I hope this is not his intention. But atheistic and agnostic evolutionists do this frequently. Harlow’s view on human behavior and evolution tends to downplay the significance of our own choices and our own responsibility.

What Dr. Harlow says about Genesis as a document is contrary to the evidence. Harlow says that Adam and Eve are strictly literary figures used to tell a story, they are not real people who lived in history. One of his proofs is that the early chapters of Genesis are based on or are rewritten versions of ancient Near Eastern myths, such as the Babylonian myths about “creation” and a great flood. Harlow claims that “The Adam and Eve story is not even mentioned in the Old Testament outside Genesis….”

Three places In the Old Testament refute this: 1)Adam is listed in the long genealogy in 1 Chronicles 1, 2) Hosea 6:7 says, “But, like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant….(NASB95)” 3) Job 31:33 in the NASB says  “Have I covered my transgressions like Adam….”  In some Bible versions, the Hosea and Job verses are without the use of Adam’s name.  However, the Hebrew text here literally says Adam, אדמ . In some contexts this Hebrew word would be translated  as man, generic.  But in the Hosea and Job contexts, it seems more likely that the person Adam is in view,  because these places are referring to the  “the Adam and Eve story.”

The New Testament has a number of references to Adam.  The genealogy of Christ refers to Adam in Luke 3:38.  Including Adam in genealogies is a clinching argument for him being a real person. Biblical genealogies are never ever myths. The Apostle Paul also refers to Adam in 1 Corinthians 15:45, “The first man Adam became a living being….”  Though the Old Testament does not mention Eve outside Genesis, the New Testament mentions her in 2 Corinthians 11:3 and 1 Timothy 2:13.  The verse in 1 Timothy 2:13 says “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.” So this verse by implication affirms that Eve was a real person and that she was the first woman.  It goes on to mention Eve being deceived in the beginning. It is not possible to take Adam and Eve as merely literary figures in these contexts.

Jesus made reference Adam and Eve as historical, when addressing the origin of marriage (Matthew 19:4, Mark 10:6) though he did not use the names “Adam” and “Eve” explicitly. In Matthew 24:38 Jesus mentions Noah by name as an historic person and the flood judgment as historic.  I think there is no question that the Jews hearing Jesus knew he was referring to Genesis as history. But  if the early chapters of Genesis are just “stories” and not history, how are we to understand Jesus? Does Harlow think the Creator of the Universe was wrong? Harlow does not answer this question.

Harlow also seems to allow for the possibility that the Apostle Paul was not really correct in his understanding. Harlow makes the statement,  “Paul, like Luke, no doubt regarded Adam as a historical person but in his letters he assumes the historicity of Adam instead of asserting it.”  If you combine what Paul said at the Aereopagus in Athens (Acts 17) with 1 Corinthians 15 I think you can say he indeed  did assert the historicity of Adam.

Harlow’s entire concept of Biblical inspiration is incorrect. I am not prepared to believe that the Apostle Paul was wrong about Adam. Scientific knowledge is not sufficient justification for rejecting the historicity of Adam and Eve, especially given the problems with evolutionary science.  Daniel Harlow explicitly denies the Bible is infallible in a Calvin Chimes article. Daniel C.Harlow, “Consensus in CRC: Bible Is not Inerrant,”Chimes, April 20, 2007, Vol. 101,Issue 26, which is no longer available on line, as of a year ago,  so I have posted it in a following article.

It is widely believed among many scholars today, both some Christian and non-Christian, that the early chapters of Genesis borrowed or reworked ideas from other ancient Near Eastern myths. This idea tends to be combined with an incorrect idea about the authorship of Genesis that says it was written not at the time of Moses but during the Israelite exile period in Babylon, (586- 530 BC) about a 1000 years after Moses.

It is widely known that there are many mythic stories from ancient peoples from all over the world that have similarities to Genesis 1-11.  Many scholars deliberately avoid the true view  that Genesis was written first, and  the Babylonian creation and flood myths came after. In reality  the Babylonian myths are distortions of the original events. Many scholars avoid the idea that Genesis is the original true authoritative account of a very ancient period of prehistory. Instead they try to argue that the ancient myths came first and Genesis was a retelling and rewriting of the old pagan Babylonian  myths,  but done to fit Jewish beliefs.  This idea has deceived many Bible scholars, seminary professors, and many seminary students today.

This view is absolutely shattered by the text of Gen. 5:1, namely that there were books recording the events of Gen 1-11 as they were happening, which later were edited and turned into a single book by Moses. Proof:  Gen 5:1 says “this is the book  ספר  of the generations of Adam”, using the word for “book” in Hebrew that is used 150 times in the O T to refer to written records, whether on clay tablets or stone or parchment.  The book of Genesis contains 10 such books.  Babylon did not exist till after the flood,  so the Babylon myths obviously could not have been sources for the first three mini-books in Genesis– book 1: Genesis 2:4 -4:26; book 2: Gen 5:1-6:8;  book 3 Gen 6:9- 9:28,  assuming that these first three books were written on clay tablets mainly by inspired eyewitnesses The Babylonians were descendants of Ham, several generations after Noah Gen. 10:  6-10.  The only reason scholars fail to consider the word “book” in Gen 5:1 is that many have been brain washed to accept the evolutionary idea that man used to be quite stupid and therefore could not have invented writing so soon.

Why would this idea of Genesis being based on old myths be so well accepted today?  First, Genesis has supernatural aspects that scholars have difficulty believing.  If someone has trouble believing Genesis, I would rather they just say so than to try to twist it to mean something else. Genesis describes the world as originally different than now.  For example in Gen.18, God appears in human form to Abraham, and in Gen 3 Satan appears in the form of a serpent or reptile.  It is understandable in a sense that if someone were unfamiliar with it, this could seem like a myth.  Yet Genesis is treated as history in the rest of the Bible.

Genesis is not written as a myth, nor even as Hebrew poetry, but as a historical narrative.  (See Ken Gentry’s article on our facebook page). Genesis 1-11 has the characteristics of Hebrew narrative, such as  the verb forms used in writing history, no parallelism (as the Psalms have), and the frequent use of the waw consecutive, characteristic of  historical writing.  Harlow sometimes refers to the literary style of ancient Near Eastern origins stories but he does not deal with the unique aspects of Hebrew.  It’s not ancient Near Eastern writing style that matters in Genesis, it’s Hebrew usage and style. Thus Harlow engages in eisegesis, not exegesis.  He forces a foreign context onto the text and thereby distorts what Scripture says.

I  (Gary VH) had to study the ancient stories from Babylon called Enuma Elish and Atrahasis in our Old Testament courses at Westminster East in the 60’s.  The gods portrayed are nothing but jealous humans raised a few degrees into gods.  The Babylonian stories tell about the conflicts and exploits of these gods, and how Earth and humans were created. The story of Gilgamesh is part of this also, including the Babylonian flood story. How ridiculous to think that Moses who met the holy God would even think of using such blasphemous stories about idols as sources.  The truth is more likely that the Babylonians took copies of the books Noah had as documents with him on the ark and then twisted them into foolish myths.

Genesis has the characteristics of a selective history, an epic narrative with multiple “main” characters. Though the Babylonian myths have some superficial similarities to Genesis, the overwhelming differences tend to be glossed over. The Babylonian stories would not be confused with a narrative of actual events because they are full of nonsensical and fanciful aspects. But Genesis is a straight-forward account of real events. It’s just that some of those events have supernatural aspects and they tell about the Creator of mankind.

A well known linguist, Charles Taylor wrote that “It is relatively easy to take true history and turn it into false myth, but it is not so easy to extract suspected truth out of any popular myth.  Such an exercise usually becomes one of intense scholarship. It is extremely difficult, and in the end you cannot do it unless you have access to the historical truth in the first place….” (See Taylor’s article on this here: http://creation.com/myth-about-myths)

Taylor also makes the point that narratives of real events are unified in the type of words used in a way that is measurably different from a fictional story.  The differences between a narrative of real events and a fictional account can be observed and measured by linquistic analysis.  Genesis has the marks of a historical narrative, not a work of fiction.  Thus Harlow is clearly wrong when he says that Genesis is of the same literary genre as the Gilgamesh and Atrahasis stories.  Harlow and many other scholars today, get truth and myth, history and fiction, confused.

There are a number of other problematic things Harlow says in his article.

One of them is to say there are two creation accounts (referring to chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis) that have “many discrepancies.” This is also clearly answered in the Ken Gentry article referred to above.

Harlow has a wrong understanding of Satan in Genesis.  His claim that Genesis 2:18-22 implies God using a process of trial and error to create a suitable mate for Adam puts God on a human level.

Harlow  views the genealogies of  Gen 5 and 11 as being “made-up” to somehow make the Hebrew people more respected in the ancient world.  True, many ancient writings from ancient kingdoms have a tendency to exaggerate numbers and deliberately write records that are misleading to promote something about a leader or a kingdom, such as Manetho’s history of the Pharaohs. But to equate the Bible with such lies, belittles God, for it is calling One  “who cannot lie,”  a liar.  (Titus 1:2)

The Amazing Discovery of Mary’s Bones in Jerusalem ( How would you answer this discovery?)

I offer the following as a parable to show how to view the relationship between general and special revelation. Sometimes a parable can give clearer understanding than normal discourse.  This parable parallels the claim of Biologos that DNA proves we descended from 10,000 monkeys, (or hominids) not from 2, Adam & Eve.

National Geographic reported  on Sept 25, 2017  the astounding discovery in Jerusalem of the bones of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  There is no question it was the Mary of the Bible because a small clay tablet over her bones says she was the mother of Jesus and of James, Joses, Jude and Simon, brothers precisely so named in Mark 6:3 and Matt 13:55.  A week later bones were discovered in a tomb in Jerusalem showing scars of nails on the ankles and wrists.  And yesterday, a DNA test of Mary and this crucified person showed they had the exact same DNA.  Therefore we can confidently say that Jesus never rose and Christianity is a fraud.

The following are several responses I’ve heard to this new discovery in Jerusalem that parallel the responses to the latest discoveries of science that prove that there was no Adam and Eve,  and no literal Genesis one.

  1. We have to give careful attention to these scientific discoveries, because science is God’s general revelation.
  2. We just can’t decide which one is right,  because God has two books : general revelation and special revelation,  and they sometimes appear to contradict.  To help us fit them together, we have to limit the Bible to salvation issues, and be skeptical of some of its historical claims. Often science is a better source of past history.
  3. We can’t reject this new science with claims that the Bible denies it, because the Bible is always an interpreted Bible.  And we may have the wrong interpretation.
  4. Maybe the church believed the resurrection, for 20 centuries (18 centuries in the case of Gen 1-3),  but  we have such sophisticated scientists today, some with several doctor’s degrees from the most prestigious universities, that we must give them a lot of weight for what they say.  Those discoveries in Jerusalem were made by the finest geologists trained at Harvard and Yale. Besides some famous Reformed theologians studied this science and believe it is correct.
  5. I believe the Bible because  God never lies, because  the resurrection of Christ is prophesied in the Old Testament and God always keeps his promises, and because  I believe the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit and the more than 500 witnesses of the risen Christ, rather than scientists living millennia after the events, men who were not there and are fallible.
  6. Without doubt this “scientific discovery” is just another case of the Piltdown hoax. (Bones were planted in 1912 in gravel in Piltdown, England  to prove the missing link, using the skull of a man and the jaw of an ape, with acid and files to make the two match. 500 people wrote papers on it, before the hoax was discovered in 1953).  Similarly, the clay tablet in Mary’s grave was also probably forged. Much origin science is put together by people who have a vested interest in doing the devil’s work to deceive and make us doubt the truth of the Bible. The Jerusalem “discovery” is no doubt the same because the hammer (man’s scientific ideas) breaks, the anvil (the Bible) stands.

The first four answers are based on a false idea of how we must define general revelation.  Our definition must come from the Bible itself. According the the Bible, general revelation teaches two things: 1) the nature of God:  Romans 1: 20 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”  “The heavens declare the glory of God.”    And 2) general revelation teaches the law of God:  Romans 2:14-15 “The Gentiles… show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness….”   These two things: God’s nature and his law are revealed to everyone,  that’s why it is called general.   But the age of the earth,  how Adam was made, and the resurrection of Christ, are are not part of general revelation.  They can be known infallibly only by special revelation. Special revelation is called special because it is known only by some people, not all people, by people to whom God reveals it in His Word.

General revelation does not come through the minds of men: it is directly from God through what he has made and by the law in the heart. It is our direct view of the sunrise, the growth of plants from seed, the steadiness of the constellations, the regularity of our heartbeat, the giving of fruitful seasons (Acts 14).  It is so direct that we are “without excuse” for not seeing God in it.

Science, however, comes through the mind of man, and in the area of origins science, (which analyzes events where no man was present), man’s heart affects what he sees or wants to see.  Because man is a sinner he is going to willfully ignore the creation and the flood  according to II Peter 3:5-7  – “They willfully ignore that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed being flooded with water.”   Because it is filtered through the mind of man, we are not “without excuse” if we don’t agree with the scientific theory of the big bang, or the extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago, or the goo-to-you-via-the-zoo theory.  Such things may not be considered “the second book”, for they are not general revelation.

The problem with answer 3 is that it casts doubts on all Bible interpretation.  But   correct interpretations are possible if they 1) take account of the type of literature, whether it is history or poetry ( and Genesis one is absolutely clear that it is history), 2)take the meaning of words according to near context . So day has to mean “day” a) because of “evening and morning” and because of the numbers given to each day; and b)   because of the use of the word elsewhere as in Exodus 20 , “for in 6 days…”  For if God wanted to say a day was a million years, there is a Hebrew word for it called “age” , eon.  But he did not say “6 days you shall labor, for in 6 eons I made heaven and earth.”  If the days were eons, but God said days, he is lying to us.

Answer 4 is based on a logical fallacy called  argumentum ad authoritatem.  If Luther had accepted this kind of argument, there would have been no Reformation, because the majority of theologians accepted transubstantiation, indulgences, the immaculate conception of Mary, and infused rather than imputed righteousness as the basis of justification.

Only answers 5 and 6 are correct.

Musings of Gary from the heart

By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them

After the entertaining story of Harry Ironside, you will read about more than ten examples of people who went from confessing the Christian faith to totally rejecting it, after being convinced of evolution.  Then follow testimonies of those who were brought back to faith or strengthened in it after being convinced that  biology, geology and astronomy do not contradict the young earth teaching of the Bible.

Here is a wonderful story of the power of the Gospel.  It is found on pages 64 and 65 of Boice’s Foundations of the Christian Faith.  

           Early in the ministry of Dr. Harry A. Ironside, the great evangelist and Bible teacher  was living in the San Francisco Bay Area  working with a group of believers called “Brethren.”  One Sunday as he was walking through  the city he came upon a group of Salvation Army workers holding a meeting on the corner of Market and Grant Avenues.  There were probably sixty of them.  When they recognized Ironside they immediately asked him if he would give his testimony. So he did, giving a word about how God had saved him through faith in the bodily death and literal resurrection of Jesus.

As he was speaking, Ironside noticed that on the edge of the crowd a well-dressed man had taken a card from his pocket and had written something on it. As Ironside finished his talk this man came forward, lifted his hat and very politely handed him the card. On one side was his name, which Ironside immediately recognized.  The man was one of the early socialists who had made a name for himself lecturing not only for socialism but also against Christianity. As Ironside turned the card over, he read, “Sir, I challenge you to debate with me the question “Agnosticism versus Christianity” in the Academy of Science Hall next Sunday afternoon at four o’clock.  I will play all expenses.”

Ironside reread the card aloud to the audience and then replied somewhat like this.  “ I am very much interested in this challenge…Therefore I will be glad to agree to this debate on the following conditions namely, that in order to prove that Mr._____________ has something worth fighting for and worth debating about, he will promise to bring with him to the Hall next Sunday two people, whose qualification I will give in a moment, as proof that agnosticism is of real value in  changing human lives and building true character.

‘First he must promise to bring with him one man who was for years what we commonly call a “down and outer.’  I am not particular as to the exact nature of the sins that had wrecked his life and made him an outcast from society- whether a drunkard, or a criminal of some kind, or a victim of his sensual appetite-  but a man who for years was under the power of evil habits from which he could not deliver himself, but who on some occasion entered one of Mr.——–“s meetings and heard his glorification of agnosticism and his denunciations of the Bible and Christianity, and whose heart and mind as he listened to such an address were so deeply stirred that he went away from that meeting saying, “Henceforth, I too am an agnostic!’  and as a result of imbibing that particular philosophy found that a new power had come into his life.  The sins he once loved he now hates, and righteousness and good-ness are now the ideals of his life.  He is now an entirely new man, a credit to himself and an asset to society – all because he is an agnostic.

“Secondly, I would like Mr.__________ to promise to bring with him one woman- and I think he may have more difficulty in finding the woman than the man- who was once a poor, wrecked, characterless outcast, the slave of evil passions, and the victim of man’s corrupt living… perhaps one who had lived for years in some evil resort… utterly lost, ruined and wretched because of her life of sin.  But this woman also entered a hall where Mr._______ was proclaiming his agnosticism and ridiculing the message of the Holy Scriptures.  As she listened, hope was born in her heart, and she said, ‘This is just what I need to deliver me from the slavery of sin!’    She followed the teaching and became an intelligent agnostic or infidel.  As a result, her whole being revolted against the degradation of the life she had been living.  She fled from the den of iniquity where she had been held captive so long;  and today, rehabilitated, she has won her way back to an honored position in society and is living a clean, virtuous, happy life- all because she is an agnostic.

“Now” he said, addressing the gentleman who had presented him with his card and the challenge, “If you will promise to bring these two people with you as examples of what agnosticism can do, I will promise to meet you at the Hall of Science at four o’clock next –Sunday, and I will bring with me at the very least 100 men and women who for years lived in just such sinful degradation as I have tried to depict, but who have been gloriously saved through believing the gospel which you ridicule. I will have these men and women with me on the platform as witnesses to the miraculous saving power of Jesus Christ- and as present-day proof of the truth of the Bible.”

Dr. Ironside then turned to the Salvation Army captain, a woman, and said,  “Captain, have you any who could go with me to such a meeting?”

She exclaimed with enthusiasm, “We can give you forty at least just from this one corps, and we will give you a brass band to lead the procession!”

“Fine” Dr. Ironside answered.  “Now, Mr._______, I will have no difficulty in picking up sixty others from the various missions, gospel halls, and evangelical churches of the city;  and if you will promise faithfully to bring two such exhibits as I have described, I will come marching in at the head of such a procession, with the band playing ‘Onward, Christians Soldiers, and I will be ready for the debate.”

Apparently the man who had made the challenge must have had some sense of humor, for he smiled wryly and waved his hand in a deprecating kind of way as if to say, “nothing doing!” and then edged out of the crowd while the bystanders clapped for Ironside and the others.

Applying this story to our present situation:  What has been the fruit of teaching evolution and what has been the fruit of teaching the Biblical truth?

First THE FRUIT of starting out as a Christian and then accepting evolution. These stories bring me great grief:
1. Harvard sociobiologist, E. O Wilson said,

“As were many persons from Alabama, I was a born-again Christian.  When I was fifteen, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion. I left the church when I got to the university of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory.”

  1. Michael Ruse, the Canadian philosopher of science and anti-creationist:

“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science.  Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion- a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality.  I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but the creationist Duane Gish is absolutely right- evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution today.

  1. Charles Templeton. He went from being the most famous evangelist in the 1940’s to an agnostic who wrote Farewell to God because he accepted evolution.

Charles Templeton began with concern about the spiritual state of post-Depression youth, so mass evangelism exploded onto the American scene in the 1940s. Thousands of young servicemen and civilians streamed to arenas to see the programs, which included preaching, music, and various acts.

One of the leaders in this movement was a young man from Canada, Charles Templeton, born in 1915. He was generally acknowledged to be the most versatile of the new young evangelists. Templeton soon rose to prominence, even surpassing another dynamic young preacher, Billy Graham. In 1946, he was listed among those best used of God by the National Association of Evangelicals.4

As the pastor of the rapidly growing Avenue Road Church in Toronto, which he had started with only his family and a few friends, Templeton also became one of three vice-presidents of the newly-formed Youth For Christ International organization in 1945. He then nominated his good friend, Billy Graham, to be field evangelist for the new ministry. Templeton, Graham, and a few others regularly spoke to thousands, winning many to Christ both in America and in Europe.

Newspapers and magazines carried reports of his meetings informing readers he was winning 150 converts a night. In Evansville, Indiana, the total attendance over the two week campaign was 91,000 out of a population of 128,000. Church attendance went up 17%.

However, despite his popularity and seeming success as an evangelist, all was not well with Charles Templeton. The more he read, the more he found he was beginning to question the essentials of the Christian faith, because he could no longer believe God’s Word beginning with Genesis.

In a conversation with Billy Graham concerning Templeton’s desire to attend Princeton Theological Seminary, Templeton stated:

‘But, Billy, it’s simply not possible any longer to believe, for instance, the biblical account of creation. The world wasn’t created over a period of days a few thousand years ago; it has evolved over millions of years. It’s not a matter of speculation; it’s demonstrable fact.’5

Templeton warned Graham that it was ‘intellectual suicide’ to not question the Bible and to go on preaching God’s Word as authoritative.

With this background of doubt about God’s Word welling up inside, and lacking any type of formal education, he decided to pursue a degree in theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Resigning from the church he had pastored for several years, Templeton began, with special permission, his coursework at Princeton in 1948.

Rather than assuage his doubts by providing sound theological answers for the questions he had concerning the authority of the Bible, the historical veracity of Genesis and the deity of Christ, Princeton only served to increase his qualms. This is not surprising, considering the influences that had infiltrated Princeton through people like Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield concerning one’s approach to the Scripture in Genesis. For instance, Hodge, who accepted the millions of years and rejected literal creation-days, taught:

‘It is of course admitted that, taking this account [Genesis] by itself, it would be most natural to understand the word [day] in its ordinary sense; but if that sense brings the Mosaic account into conflict with facts, [millions of years] and another sense avoids such conflict, then it is obligatory on us to adopt that other.’6

Warfield (1851–1921) went further and, unlike Hodge, even accepted Darwinism. Templeton, like generations of others, was taught at Princeton to reject parts of Genesis in favor of man’s beliefs concerning such things as billions of years.7

After graduating from Princeton, Templeton accepted a position with the National Council of Churches, conducting preaching missions across the United States and Canada. However, he faced increasing health problems, specifically frequent chest pains. He visited a specialist in Pennsylvania who encouraged him, after finding nothing wrong with his heart, to clear up the conflict in his life—namely the doubts he harbored about the authority of the Bible from which he so fervently preached to thousands each night.8

This reminds of another who suffered illness because of a great conflict in his life regarding teaching that undermined God’s Word. Charles Darwin, who started out in training to be an Anglican minister, ended up rejecting Christianity the more he believed in evolution. It has been said that inner conflict, because of knowing that evolution would wipe the idea of God from the minds of millions, contributed greatly to Darwin’s psychosomatic illness.9

Templeton’s struggles affected others, too. As Templeton wrestled with the ‘demonstrable fact’ of evolution which made it impossible for him to believe ‘the biblical account of creation’,10 he sought out his close friend, Billy Graham. This caused Graham as well to grapple with tough questions that shook the very roots of the faith he professed and preached daily—namely, ‘was the Bible completely true?’11

With ‘science’ pulling Templeton one way and the Bible seemingly pulling him in an altogether different direction, he resigned from his position with the National Council of Churches and took over the Department of Evangelism of the Presbyterian Church USA. At the same time, he hosted a CBS TV series, called Look Up and Live.

Finally, however, the doubts about everything he stood for became too great and he decided to leave the ministry.

In his autobiography, Farewell to God, Charles Templeton lists his ‘reasons for rejecting the Christian faith’. Most of these relate to the origins issue and thus the accuracy of the book of beginnings—Genesis

  • Physicists who say ‘it took billions of years for the universe, our galaxy, our solar system, and our world to evolve to its present … form.’12
  • Anthropologists who say that ‘our earlier ancestors did not suddenly appear fully formed, but were anthropoid creatures who lived on the earth millions of years ago.
  • Geneticists who say it is ‘nonsense’ to believe that the ‘reason for all the crime, poverty, suffering, and general wickedness in the world’ is sin.13
  • Geologists who say ‘there is no evidence whatsoever of a worldwide flood’ as told in Genesis.13
  • The two ‘Creation stories … each differing from the other at almost every point.’14
  • The ‘fables’ (in Genesis 1 and 2) which have ‘remained the grounds of Christian theology across the centuries.’15
  • Noah and his family were too primitive to have built the Ark.16
  • All the animals could not possibly have fitted on the Ark.16
  • Where did the water come from for the Flood?17
  • Those Christians who ‘reject any advance in science or learning that contradicts the Genesis account of the creation of the world, the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and God’s curse on the world and humankind … and who believe that the only deliverance from this curse and eventual banishment to an eternal hell is to be “born again”.’18
  • The ‘grim and inescapable reality’ that ‘all life is predicated on death. Every carnivorous creature must kill and devour another creature. It has no option.’19
  1. Stalin, from a Russian Orthodox seminary student in Georgia (one of the Soviet republics) to the violent atheist. The following is taken from Nancy Pearcey’s book Total Truth.   Nancy spoke at Dordt 3 years ago.

Particularly startling is the corrosive impact of Darwin. e.g. Ch 8 Darwins of the Mind p 227: She describes reading a biography of Joseph Stalin

. . .when the young Stalin was a seminary student, studying to become a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church. As one of his friends relates, they were discussing religion:
“Joseph heard me out, and after a moment’s silence, Joseph said: “‘You know, they are fooling us, there is no God …’
“I was astonished at these words. I had never heard anything like it before.
“How can you say such things, Joseph?’ I exclaimed.
“‘I’ll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,’ Joseph said.
“‘What book is that?’ I inquired.
“‘Darwin. You must read it,’ Joseph impressed on me.”

We all know what happened after that: Having become an atheist, Stalin went on to murder literally 20 to 40 million of his own people in his attempt to construct an officially atheistic communist state.

Between Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, etc. Darwin’s corrosive principles laid the foundation for the murder of more than 125 million people in the 20th century. About three times more than the 38 million killed in all the wars of the 20th century!

This is detailed in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, et al. Harvard University Press (October 1999)ISBN: 0674076087  (I’ve read this book, by 6 French journalists who simply report on the archives in Russia and elsewhere opened up after Communism fell.   Gary)

Pearcey goes on to describe the impact of Darwin on

  1. 6. 7, 8 . John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, and Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr., causing them to loose their faith and develop philosophical pragmatism etc. It is sad to see another victim fall. “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” Matthew 7:20

    9. Howard Van Til, CRC professor at Calvin College, from around 1970 – 1995. s – from Calvinist to pantheist.

Howard Van Til taught animal ancestry at Calvin, and was told by the Synod of 1990 (I was on the synodical committee that recommended this) to no longer “espouse animal ancestry in a church sponsored college” .

After he retired he revealed his true colors:  he said he did not believe in the Creator- creature distinction of the Bible, but believed that God was part of the creation, a being he said we should call the SGT, something greater than.

I went to his church’s blog and found him conversing with his RCA pastor (who was defrocked from the Spring Lake Reformed Church) over how to combine evolution and the Hindu teaching of the transmigration of souls .

  1. Harry Kuitert 1924 – 2017 – In the 70’s many times the CRC Banner had articles about his teaching of animal ancestry in the free University, and the Banner was warning against that teaching spreading to the USA.

In 1967 he succeeded the illustrious theologian G. C. Berkouwer as professor of systematic theology at the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, and in 1989 he retired from this chair. Kuitert in the course of his life moved from Reformed orthodoxy to Reformed middle orthodoxy following his mentor and Ph.D. supervisor Berkouwer, for whom he wrote his dissertation on the Divine Co-Humanity (Dutch: medemenselijkheid, Afrikaans: Medemenslikheid) (De mensvormigheid Gods (1962); German edition 1967). Then, after writing voluminously, critically, and yet appreciatively on Karl Barth, Kuitert later also moved on to a totally unorthodox stance on Jesus Christ, skipping Neo-Orthodoxy altogether. Kuitert developed his views beyond those of Berkouwer whose views seemed definitive.

According to Ecumenical News International, Kuitert, after his own emeritation in 1989, and by now the most widely read theologian in the Netherlands, broke completely with Berkouwer and “Middle Orthodox” tradition (the theological mainstream of the reformed church) in his book, Jesus, the Inheritance of Christianity (1998). “Jesus supported the Jewish view of God, so he never saw himself as God on earth. He is not a Second God, nor the Second Person of the Holy Trinity,” said the 80 years-old Kuitert, adopting publicly an informal unitarian stance on the key doctrine of Christian faith, much to the grief of those who continue to love and appreciate the work of Kuitert’s mentor Berkouwer.

One could fill hundreds of pages with similar stories.

Now what has been the FRUIT of teaching the Biblical view of creation?   I’ll just quote many letters sent to Answers in Genesis, about how their internet site, their books, and museum have strengthened faith in Scripture.

1,  R.C. Alabama “My son in law, daughter, and grandchildren paid a visit to the ark.  My son-in-law was not saved. We had been praying for him for so long.  At the Ark, he surrendered to the Lord Jesus.  It was just a wonderful moment.  We are all indebted to you for putting together a wonderful place for him to find the Lord Jesus. We appreciate you all for that.  Praise God!  (Nov. 2017)

2. G. K. Minnesota “The information in Answers in Genesis new book   “Replacing Darwin; the New Origin of Species” is what prompted me to write this. Thank you for improving my understanding of God through a better understanding of Genesis.  March 2018

3. B.H. Virginia “I am a ministries pastor. My pastor gave me a video series to watch put together by Answers in Genesis. Now I see the world in light of God’s Word. This past week we brought 18 of our kids from church to the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, which amazed the kids.   I thank you so much because from the first video got me hooked to this content. I purchased the Foundations 6 DVD set, which has made the Bible’s authority on all things so clear now to me, and it all makes sense now.  Oct 2017

4. J. B. Kentucky “Thank you for helping us with our outreach Friday night with AIG resources at a school event. What a source of real science you provided for so many children and their parents. When people see you love them and their children more than you love money, it makes an impact on their hearts and that leads them to a receptiveness to your tracts, magazines, and DVDs. I would also like to thank you for helping me be a better Sunday school teacher. I am so thankful for how God used you to strengthen my understanding of Scripture. I’m also thankful for what our God has done at the Creation Museum ever since you opened in 2007.  Dec 2017

5.B.T. I’m a 16 year old junior who is ridiculed in high school for being a Christian, especially as a Christian who believes in Genesis.  I want to  thank you for providing answers because I can refute evolution beliefs with ease now.  Please continue your work for the Lord and may God bless your ministry. Sept  2017

  1. A.C. Washington Answers in Genesis has greatly strengthened my ability to share my faith in the authority of God’s Word.  My confidence in knowing what I believe has soared.  It is so exciting.  March 2017
  1. Ray Comfort, President, Living Waters “Many had told me that the Ark is incredible, but they grossly understated it.  It is utterly amazing, completely overwhelming, and wonderfully incredible’’ far above anything I was expecting.  I have been through the Smithsonian in DC and the Louvre in Paris, and the Ark is so much better in a hundred different ways.  It excels in excellence.  You don’t just see it.  You experience it.  Take your family and friends.   Feb  2017
  1. M.M. Georgia “I am a 17 year old college student who grew up reading and watching many of your resources. When hearing that you were coming to my state this weekend, I was thrilled. I have been able to use many of your teaching examples in my biology class as I interact with my professor and my classmates.  Thank you. sir. You and all of Answers in Genesis have had a tremendous influence on me, and God has used you to see the truth behind the curtain of darkness that our culture tries to throw over the eyes of many young people!   Sept.  2016

I could go on with hundreds more testimonies like this. By their fruit you shall know them.
Musings of Gary From the Heart.

Where Was The Animal Death Before The Fall?

Was there animal death before the fall?   Does the wasp laying eggs in a caterpillar, thus leading to the caterpillar’s death, prove  animal death before the fall?

Peter in his sermon gave us such encouraging words:  “Repent therefore and return that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time…”        Acts 3:  19-21.

The Greek word restoration implies “a return … to a former, original, normal, or unimpaired condition, or the restitution of something taken away or lost”     Thayer’s Greek Dictionary defines this Greek word this way:  a return to the way things were before the fall of Adam and Eve.

What was the condition of things before the fall?   Only the Bible is our true source of knowledge about how things were before the fall.   What does the Bible say? We are told that when God finished creation,  behold it was very good.   We are told that Adam and Eve were without sin,  for they were naked and not ashamed.  There was no sin to make them ashamed.  There was to be no death for man, for death was definitely the result of sin as we read in Genesis 2:  in the day you eat thereof you will surely die, and Genesis 3:   Because you have eaten , dust you are and to dust you shall return.

So without doubt there was no human death before the fall.  But was there animal death?  Some use Romans 5:12 to prove there was no animal death,  but  I agree with Terry Mortenson, on this, that  Romans 5, though absolutely clear in teaching that human sin brought human death, does not explicitly say human sin brought animal death also.   So does that mean that the Scriptures give no answer as to whether animals were eating each other in an evolutionary dog it dog survival of the fittest kind of world?    Absolutely not.  The Bible gives many  clear answers.  We will look at three of these.

The first is Acts 3: 21,  in the words  “the restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of the holy prophets from ancient time.”   What holy prophets did speak about this restoration?

In his commentary on Acts 2:21, Lenski,  the German Lutheran commentator of 1864- 1936  points to two places from “the holy prophets”  who speak of this restoration:

Isa 11: 6-9   And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them.  Also the cow and the bear will graze;  their young will lie down together; and the lion will eat straw like the ox.  And the nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra; and the weaned child will put his hand on the viper’s den.  They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

Isaiah 35:  1-10     … Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.  Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy…. No lion will be there, nor will any vicious beast go up on it.  These will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there…

Both of these Isaiah passages speak of animals not eating each other in the future,  so that means that when things are restored, the future will restore the way they were in the past.  Some believe the wolves and lions in these verses are only used as symbols for tyrants and murderers.  Surely that will be the case in the new world: they will cease to be.   But understanding these verses to also be about animals would fit with the following:

A second  passage about animal death is Genesis 1:30 where God says that the food of animals is the green plant,  thus they are not given each other to eat.

“to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food, and it was so.”

A third passage which Terry Mortenson says is the most powerful answer is Romans 8: 20-23  “For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God .  For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers in the pain of childbirth together until now.”   Corruption of course includes death.   Why is this such a clear answer that there was no animal death before the fall?

The answer:  because the corruption, that is the death,  that is, the  groaning and suffering in pain in verses 20-22 is not about man’s suffering and death,  but animal suffering and death. Let me say that again,  the suffering and pain in verses 20-22 is not about man’s suffering and death, but the animals suffering and death.   We can say that absolutely, because of verse  23:  And not only this, but also we ourselves… groan.    So only starting in verse 23 is he speaking of the part of creation we call human.  The three verses before verse 23 are speaking about the non human part of creation, from animals to all other parts.    This being the case we can read verses 20-22 by using the words “animals, plants and earth” where the word “creation” is found.

According to the theistic evolutionist all this corruption and suffering and death occurred before sin as well as after sin.  But v 20,  says no, it came after the fall.   “It was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it.”   And when did that subjection happen?  In the garden after the fall when God cursed not only man but also man’s domain.  And what is man’s domain: all that man was to have dominion over: the ground ( it was cursed with a flood),  its plants, (it started to have thorns and thistles),  and the animals .

In these three verses I think we have the strongest Biblical answer to why theistic evolution is totally contrary to Scripture.

If the theistic evolution picture is true,  then the restoration Peter speaks about in Acts 3:21 will be horrible.    And what is their picture: it’s dog eat dog, survival of the fittest,  animals preying on each other, mass extinctions (some say 60%), floods and volcanoes, and mass destructions.

Theistic evolutionists claim they are being objective scientists  looking at a clear fossil record.  But the fossil record is not a record of “behold it is very good.” For this record shows animals eating each other, dinosaurs having cancer, some animals suffering diseases like arthritis.  There are even huge fossil graveyards such as in Agate Springs where 9000 animals like rhinos, horses, camels are mixed in chaos.

Without floods and catastrophes we would have few if any fossils. For  fossils are formed by sudden floods carrying sediment burying animals.  Because the burial was so sudden, details like the soft parts of jelly fish are clear. No fossils are formed when animals die on the land or in the sea under normal conditions.  That’s because  animals lying on the land are eaten by other animals;  fish dying in the sea are eaten by other fish.  Thus the fossil record is one of horrible sudden death by floods or volcanoes.

Theistic evolutionists are thus forced to picture God as destructive, evil, vicious, irrational, and leaving chaos and misery in his path as he guides the evolutionary process.

Too often the question of  animal death before the fall is discussed without reference to the catastrophic nature of the fossil record, this evidence of God’s cursing what he has made.  Instead we abstract the question from this historical geological record by just referencing a wasp that lays its eggs in a caterpillar, which in turn kills the caterpillar, as though that proves there was animal death before the fall.  But if we believe that God did not curse the domain of Adam before the fall,  then we would have to assert that God gave the wasp a different way of  producing young before the fall.  Just as God changed the DNA of Adam and Eve so that there would be genetic entropy after the fall leading to death, so he could have changed the way of the wasp before and after.

Theistic evolutionists all to a man deny that  Noah’s flood covered the whole earth,  so they have to conclude that most of the millions of floods that killed animals  occurred before sin.   That’s a problem only for the theistic evolutionists who believe in a real historical fall.   Sadly more and more of  them today deny a real Adam and Eve and thus deny the fall, and thus believe God was cursing his creation from the beginning.

Theistic evolutionists have told me that if we don’t accept their science, the world will not want to believe in Christ, because their science is so sure. They say that Christians who teach a young earth will be viewed as opposers of truth, despisers of science, not interested in God’s second book, and thus no one will listen to their Gospel witness or want to hear about their God.

In fact the opposite is true.  Listen to the testimony of a philosopher writing in the British journal, Nature, the leading science journal in Great Britain.  This atheist philosopher is saying that if theistic evolution is true, he hates the character of such a God.

“The problem that biological evolution poses for natural theologians” (meaning theistic evolutionists) “is the sort of God that a Darwinian version of evolution implies. The evolutionary process is rife with happenstance, contingency, incredible waste, death, pain, and horror. Whatever the God implied by the evolutionary theory and the data of natural history may be like, he is not the Protestant God…  He is also not a loving God who cares about his productions. He is not even the awful God portrayed in the book of Job. The God of the Galapagos” (the Galapagos Islands where Darwin birthed his theory) “is careless, wasteful, indifferent, almost diabolical. He is certainly not the sort of God to whom anyone would be inclined to pray.”

This God of theistic evolution is  not the God of the  good news  declared by Peter in his sermon in Acts 3:21.    Peter’s understanding,  and Isaiah’s understanding of this restoration, is  just one more of dozens of reasons why I can’t understand how any Christian would want to compromise with evolution and call it theistic evolution.  Why would a person baptize a world of chaos and death before the fall and call that good?   It’s beyond me.

I certainly hope God isn’t going to restore such an ugly world when Christ returns.

Musings of Gary From the Heart