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)