I'm going to comment on this post:
There are two kinds of thinking that get in the way of the conversation evangelicals need to have over evolution.One is a defensive, retreatist approach aimed at maintaining theological parameters deemed non-negotiable in mainstream evangelical thinking despite the evidence of science.
Does Peter Enns have any theological non-negotiables? Or is everything in Scripture up for grabs?
One advantage that the first group has over the second is the frank admission that evolution poses a serious challenge to how Christians have traditionally understood at least three central issues of the faith: the origin of humanity, of sin, and of death. That is true.
It poses a serious challenge if you take it seriously. What about offering a serious challenge to evolution?
"I argue in The Evolution of Adam that sin and death are undeniable universal realities, whether or not we are able to attribute them to a primordial man who ate from the wrong tree. The Christian tradition, however, has generally attributed the cause to sin and death to Adam as the first human. Evolution claims that the cause of sin and death, as Paul understood it, is not viable. That leaves open the questions of where sin and death come from."
Sin is a theological category. If Enns rejects the witness of Scripture, then in what sense is sin an undeniable universal reality?
More than that, the very nature of what sin is and why people die is turned on its head. Some behaviors Christians have thought of as sinful are understood in an evolutionary scheme as means of ensuring survival—for example, the aggression and dominance associated with “survival of the fittest” and sexual promiscuity to perpetuate one’s gene pool.
In which case Darwinism and Biblical theology are irreconcilable.
So, I repeat my point: evolution cannot simply be grafted onto evangelical Christian faith as an add-on, where we can congratulate ourselves on a job well done. This is going to take some work—and a willingness to take theological risk.
What authority does Peter Enns have to take a theological risk? He's not a prophet. Revealed theology isn't a set of bargaining chips.
Evolution demands true intellectual synthesis:
A "synthesis" suggests a partnership. Yet for Enns, Darwinism is the cookie-cutter. Darwinism dictates the boundaries of Christian theology. That's not a synthesis. That's leftovers. At best, his position is syncretistic rather than synthetic.
...a willingness to rethink one’s own convictions in light of new data, and that is typically a very hard thing to do.
What's the difference between elastic convictions and no convictions?
The cognitive dissonance created by evolution is considerable, and I understand why either avoidance or theological superficiality might be attractive. But in the long run, the price we pay for not doing the hard and necessary synthetic work is high indeed.
What about the exorbitant price of redefining Christian theology to put evolution front and center?
Evangelicals are sociologically a defensive lot, tending to focus on the need to be faithful to the past, to make sure that present belief matches that of previous generations.
Although it's sometimes cast in those terms, that's not the real issue. The real issue is the need to be faithful to revealed truth.
I get the point, but we must be just as burdened to be faithful to the future, to ensure that we are doing all we can to deliver a viable faith to future generations.
Our chief responsibility to future generations is to be faithful to God in our own generation. That's the best example we can set for the next generation.
That too is a high calling. Ignoring reality or playing theological games won’t do—no matter how unsettling, destabilizing, perhaps frightening such a calling may be.
Darwinism is not reality. Darwinism is a man-made intellectual construct.
Such a journey must be taken, for the alternatives are not pleasant. Christians can turn away, but the current scientific explanation of cosmic and biological origins is not going away...
How does Enns know that? In the nature of the case, scientists inevitably overrate current scientific theories. That's because, although scientists can judge past theories by present theories, they can't judge present theories by future theories. Until a new scientific discovery comes along, until a new scientific genius comes along, they work with that they have. But current cosmological theories, to take one example, are quite fragile.
…nor is our growing understanding of the nature of Israelite faith in its ancient Near Eastern context.
What's the basis for his claim about "our growing understanding of the nature of Israelite faith in its ancient Near Eastern context"? To my knowledge, there have been no recent revolutionary archeological findings–assuming that archeological findings are ever theologically revolutionary.
From what I can tell, the great age of Biblical archeological discovery is past. In the age of French and British colonialism, it was possible to do archeology in key regions of the Mideast. Now those lie within the jurisdiction of Muslim regimes which are often hostile to Biblical archeology. Important archeology is still done in Israel, but it's much harder to do in Muslim countries.
By faith I believe that the Christian story has deep access to a reality that materialism cannot provide and cannot be expected to know.
Given his uncritical credulity where Darwinism is concerned, his sudden appeal to faith is abrupt and arbitrary. A classic deus ex machina.
As for evangelicals, perhaps evolution will eventually wind up being more of a help than a hindrance. Perhaps it will remind us that our theologies are provisional;
Aren't scientific theories supposed to be provisional?
...when we forget that fact, we run the risk of equating what we think of God with God himself.
Isn't that the point of God's self-revelation in Scripture? Not leaving it up to us to guess what God is like, but God disclosing to us what he is like?
It may be that evolution, and the challenges it presents, will remind us that we are called to trust God, which means we may need to restructure and even abandon the “god” that we have created in our own image.
In which God does Enns put his trust? Clearly not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When Enns talks about God, he has no fixed frame of reference. It's all free variables. Everything is adjustable to "science."
Working through the implications of evolution may remind Christians that trusting God’s goodness is a daily decision…
Is the God of theistic evolution trustworthy? What about extinct hominids? Assuming evolution is true, if Homo erectus or Neanderthal trusted God, wasn't their trust misplaced? Wasn't their faith betrayed? Why presume Cromagnon won't suffer the same sorry fate?
...a spiritually fulfilling act of recommitment to surrender to God no matter what.
Except that he's substituted evolution for God. Surrendering to evolution no matter what.
That’s not easy. But if we have learned anything from the saints of the past, it is that surrendering to God each day, whatever we are facing, is not meant to be easy. Taking up that same journey now will add our witness for the benefit of future generations.
Our duty is to preserve and transmit the deposit of faith. Christianity is a revealed religion. A Christian theologian is first and foremost a custodian of revealed truths. It's not a literary tradition which you can constantly rewrite. It's not like the Star Trek canon, where you can invoke time-travel to change the past and thereby reboot the plot, setting, and characters.
It is what it was. If you think Scripture's metanarrative is wrong, then it can't be fixed at this late date. There is no new revelation.
