Intolerant tolerance

I’ll make a few quick comments about the ouster of Bruce Waltke from RTS:

1.Waltke has an exceptional skill-set. In many ways he’s a very useful scholar. So, in that respect, his ouster is a genuine loss to the institution.

But by the same token, a man like Waltke can do the kind of damage that only good men can do.

2.Organizations like BioLogos portray themselves as wanting to open a “dialogue” between science and Scripture. To harmonize faith and reason.

But in reality, they think creationists and inerrantists already lost the key debate way back in the 19C. Science is right–the Bible is wrong. The time for meaningful dialogue is over. The time is past due for backward believers to just get over it and move ahead by making the necessary adjustments to their theology.

3.From what I can tell, Waltke is to the right of Enns. Although Waltke apparently subscribes to theistic evolution in general, I guess he carves out an exception for the special creation of Adam and Eve.

But, of course, the problem with that makeshift solution is that if the scientific evidence for macroevolution in general is convincing, then that would presumably include evolutionary evidence for protohuman hominids in particular. So I don’t see that Waltke can have it both ways.

4.Regarding the question of “academic freedom,” permit me to use a personal illustration. I’m an amil. I’m not a dogmatic amil like Kline or O. P. Robertson. Nevertheless, I’m an amil. If I were not an amil, I’d be a postmil. If I were not a postmil, I’d be a historic premil–or maybe remain agnostic on the millennial debate. Something like Dispensational/pretribulational premillennialism would be at the bottom of the list for me.

Now I notice, when I mouse over to the website of the The Master’s Seminary, that the faculty are required to profess premillennialism. (Not surprisingly, Dallas Theological Seminary has a similar statement of faith.)

Does that make me feel excluded? I’m a scandalized by the fact that TMS would never hire Vern Poythress or Gregory Beale? No. Would I be scandalized if TMS fired a professor who went from premillennialism to amillennialism? No.

I’m not bothered by seminaries having theological distinctives, even if I happen to disagree with their distinctives. In that respect I’m far more tolerant of theological diversity than all the liberals and pluralists who decry the ouster of Waltke.