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.
"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."
ReplyDeleteCall me a loser and a backward believer then. I deny that the Bible is errant. And I deny neo-darwinian macroevolution: molecules-to-man, nonlife-to-life, primordial goo to a human you narrative.
"Regarding the question of “academic freedom,”
Just watch Ben Stein's movie about what secular academicians and scholars do to scientists who deny evolution. They blackball them, make it impossible to get published in their group-think, peer-reviewed journals, and deny tenure.
Heck, just look at what the politicial liberal-leftists who are in control of many academic departments do to conservative scholars, if the conservative scholars are even allowed into the department. It's ridiculous.
Intolerant tolerance, indeed.
Well, I believe there is evolution, it's just not Darwinian and it doesn't create new "species" (which is a term so fluid it really has no definition in science anyway). There is some evidence for limited versions of Darwinism too, but the Darwinist runs rampant with this and take it so far beyond what's proven as to be complete nonsense. To give an analogy, they're like a prosecutor trying to prove the defendant is guilty of murder by proving he once jaywalked. "Given enough time," they say, "he would have escalated his crime spree to murder."
ReplyDeleteSteve is Bruce Waltke still evangelical unlike Peter Enns
ReplyDelete"Evangelical" is such an elastic terms that it's hard to say. I think it's more useful to discuss truth, falsehood, and the limits of toleration.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a label, I'd say Waltke is a moderate while Enns is a liberal.
ReplyDelete