I would like to suggest that we take more seriously what we read in Genesis 1 about God creating humans to be his image, particularly in the matter of "subduing the earth." This means that God wants us as humans to create our civilizations in such a way that they incorporate the virtues of God such as honesty, love, justice, truth, etc. in the way our culture functions. History is the process of our learning how to do that, so that the closer any culture gets to this standard the more godly it will be. African cultures need, as to all cultures, to be analyzed in this respect. How truthful, just, loving, etc is our culture? Christianity exists for that purpose, to disciple the nations, as Christ commands us.
In addition to your notes, there is another perspective to add.
God used the Church of the Middle Ages to convert the barbarian tribes of Europe, a process pretty well completed by about 1000 A.D.
Also, and important, these converted nations were discipled to the extent that they had changed their national output from destructive (of the Roman Empire) to constructive (the renaissance). This would not have happened had the church not disciplined them as it did. But now, having achieved a measure of spiritual maturity, many of these peoples no longer required the rather arbitrary disciplinary measures of the Middle Ages, and broke away much the same way as young people, disciplined by their parents, break away from home to make their own way in life. We should see God's hand in this process, using the efforts of the church of the medieval period to further his kingdom. See not only the human defects but also and more important the sovereign grace of God in giving direction to the process of human history in Europe.
You both are surprised that I think God is succeeding in making the human race better. You point out a long list of evils, seemingly proving that we are getting worse instead of better. May I suggest that you have clearer eyes to see what Satan is doing than what God is doing? The evils you point out highlight the task that remains to be done, but it does nothing to delineate the progress the gospel is making.
Recall that Jesus said, prior to his ascension, that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs now to him. If the world is getting worse instead of better, would this not negate Jesus’ affirmation? We say now that Jesus sits at God’s right hand. What do you think that means? It means that God, who has absolute authority over everything he has created, is now exercising that authority by means of his “right hand man” Jesus, that is, by the gospel preached by the church and effectuated by the Holy Spirit.
Then, when we put all that in the context of Genesis One, image of God and cultural mandate, we see that God is slowly getting us, the human race, to learn how to be the humans God wants us to become. That includes everything we do, not only as individuals but also as nations and as an entire human race. Actually, it is precisely in the effect of the gospel on our cultural institutions that we must learn to see the power of Christ at work, not only in our personal lives. Are the United States and Canada more just societies than ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome? How can you doubt it? That is because the gospel has had enormous effect in transforming our barbarian ancestors in Europe into the constructive nations of the western world. The evils you point out, accordingly, point to the task remaining to be done.
Another item on a somewhat different tack. God is calling us today in the twenty-first century to listen to what he is saying via the scientific community. John, you are concerned with the gaps in scientific knowledge, rightly perhaps, but we need to listen when such matters as the age of the universe, the construction of the planets, the appearance of life, the provenance of the human race, and other dramatic breakthroughs such as the genome list – when these things are demonstrated to be true. I personally believe we need to adopt an entirely different paradigm around which to reconstruct our theology, a paradigm of developmentalism. You will both recognize that if we do that, then the notion of God guiding us into a better and better life by means of the gospel makes a lot more sense.
Item # 1. 1) The author </em>(Walhout<em>) frames the whole thing in a reading of history that is simply inaccurate. Purgatory, indulgences, relics, etc. did not form the "backbone of Christianity" 500 years ago. When these became too important, the Reformation happened. To put creation, sin and salvation (think Apostles Creed) on par with these is simply wrong.
Response. I believe in creation, sin and salvation. I also believe in the Apostles’ Creed. I would not put the items mentioned “on a par with” more important doctrines. I am simply affirming that the time has come when God is asking us to re-examine our traditional formulations in the light of scientific discoveries, and if found defective, to improve them. Who knows, it may even result in another upheaval the size of the Reformation?
Item # 2. 2) Apart from the concluding blurb from a synodical report, Walhout fails to mention anything about how the church has already been wrestling with these issues for the past 150 years. This includes the various ways Genesis 1 has been interpreted well before Darwin came along, the numerous scholars who have described Adam and Eve as the representative head of the human race, and the work of scholars today in wrestling with these questions (i.e. books and articles by the Haarsmas at Calvin College).
Response. It is because I have read these and similar books and articles that I have come to the conclusions I have. There isn’t room in one Banner article to summarize all that; I articulated the insights that such documents have suggested to me.
Item # 3. 3) This article lacks helpful distinctions, such as the difference between evolution and naturalism, which help us ask and answer the important questions.
Response. What one person considers “the important questions” will probably vary from person to person. I addressed those that were important to me, and in my judgment important for the church as a whole to address. To expose what the article does not do may help some, but it would be much more helpful to address the items it does propose (as in the next item #4).
Item # 4. 4) He does suggest evolutionary theory calls for a reworking of doctrines like creation, sin and salvation. About sin, he says, "We will have to find a much better way of understanding what sin is, where it comes from, and what its consequences are. Theologians will have to find a new way of articulating a truly biblical doctrine of sin and what effect it has on us." In other words, evolutionary theory will enable theologians to be true to the Bible in our theological articulations. The implication being that now we will really understand the Bible. I think the problems in this are obvious. I am a bit floored that anyone in this forum might suggest that sin and salvaiton are not core doctrines of the Christian faith.
Response. I did not suggest that sin and salvation are not core doctrines of the Christian faith. They are. I simply suggested that we may need to find a better way of understanding them. The paradigm of developmentalism will help us to do that.
Item # 5. 5) The author makes a prediction about the future, a prophetic claim, if you will. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that we humans with our best sciences cannot predict the future. Unless Walhout received this from God himself (including being from Scripture), he should not put this forward as something that will inevitably happen. Being a false prophet is a serious matter in the Bible."
Response. What prediction is he talking about? That people a millennium from now might look back on our times with amazement? If so, I do plead guilty. It’s interesting that he says history teaches us we cannot predict the future, but in this case I am pleading the actual precedent of history, the exact opposite of what my critic suggests! From where did I receive this? Where does anyone receive truth from? All truth is from God. So, in so far as my article is truthful, of course it comes from God. I think he misread the article if he says that I am predicting that it “will inevitably happen.” It appears to me that it will happen, but this is a far cry from inevitability. And his last comment. Indeed it is a serious matter to be a false prophet. However, perhaps my critic should raise a mirror. What if it turns out I am right and he is wrong? Would that make him the false prophet?
You know, John, it is only of secondary importance for you to understand me or for me to understand you; what is of primary importance is for us together to understand God. I am hearing God speak to us via the scientific community, and, frankly, you appear reluctant to listen. You appear to be listening to what God said to our forefathers centuries ago but to be closing your ears to what God is saying to us now. Is it so strange that God might be asking us to move ahead in our thinking and in our obedience? You would not be wanting to close your ears if that were so.
John, I apologize for the suggestion that you may not be listening to God. I did not intend to insult you, but I guess I did. You have a much right to say the same of me from your point of view. For whatever good it might do, I withdraw the comment. I’m sorry for it. We are all trying our best to listen for the truth that God has for us.
Further, I have nothing whatever to say in reply to your scientific insights. I have no expertise whatever in that field. I can only say I have been convinced by what Van Till wrote back in the early nineties and what the two Calvin profs wrote in the scientific journal a couple of years ago, and what I heard from a biologist about chimpanzees being 97% the same genetically as humans.
My concern is theology and Bible interpretation. And I do see progress, development, in the Bible. Genesis One describes the successive stages in the creation, moving step by step toward the shaping of the world as God wanted it to be. Each day’s work presupposes the work of the preceding day. That’s development, is it not?
Similarly the work of God in shaping the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. Abraham was called out of the polytheism of Babylon into monotheism, the one only God of Israel, Yahweh. That’s a good and necessary development. God gave Israel the Torah at Mount Sinai; that too is a step forward for them, shaping a coherent nation out of a group of slaves. The return from Babylonian captivity was also an advance, once for all eliminating idolatry from the people.
I think we need to see also that the ministry of Jesus is also a step forward in God’s plan to save the world, the extension of the gospel to all nations, not merely to the Jews. So I see also this same process continuing as the gospel overcomes all obstacles in the ancient Roman empire, resulting in 390 in Emperor Theodosius declaring Christianity to be the only legal religion in the empire. That’s progress, development. Then look at what the gospel did for the barbarian tribes that overran the empire. It transformed them from destructive to constructive, producing the beginnings of the western civilization which we have inherited.
You have constantly pointed out the failures and inadequacies and evils that still plague us. Nobody denies that. But for myself I keep looking at what God has done and what he is continuing to do, and I am confident that the work he has begun he will continue to do until such time as he determines will be the telos toward which he guides all things.
God’s work has encountered major setbacks all throughout history, but God always has a way of using those setbacks as the occasion for making a major step forward in his plan to get us as a human race to greater obedience. We can have all confidence that God will use the evil things you mention in order to have us rebound from them into a better world. That’s what I believe with all my heart. This is God’s world, not the devil’s.
John, You write at the end, "But this is not a biological evolution. This is a spiritual renewal, a being born again, a dedication to God, and a fulfillment of God’s promise. It is wrong to conflate this with evolution in which God plays no visible role, or in which God cannot intervene.<"/p> I trust that you are not suggesting I am defending a concept of evolution in which God plays no role. I am suggesting that the process of the physical development of the universe since the beginning of time can be characterized as the way God has brought the world to the condition it is in today, and that this guidance, this sovereign control, applies as well to the control of human history as well, all of this working steadily toward the telos God has in mind for the future.
John, in your last sentence you speak of "undirected macro-evolution." But what about "directed macro-evolution?" Directed of course by the Creator God as in Genesis One and throughout the Bible. Which, to my unscientific mind, would be what appears to be truthful Biblically. Do you suppose God could have employed such a developmental method to bring the world and the human race to the point at which we are today? My theological concern has been what effect, if any, would such a development have on our traditional theological definitions. There doesn't seem to be a meeting of the minds on that point.
Well, John, I am somewhat puzzled by how to respond to you. You keep throwing at me all kinds of scientific items that simply go over my head and to which I cannot respond one way or another. On the other hand you are now presenting a lot of theological problems that you see with what what you think I believe.
I have worked my way through many questions similar to those you raise. It wasn’t easy and didn’t come quickly, but I have come to a new vision of how God works that seems to me to be a much better way of understanding human history than our traditions present. Frankly, it does not appear to me from what you write that you are really asking for help in working your way through those questions. It seems rather that you are raising them, not for your benefit, but for destroying my insights.
That being said, let me say something about Adam and Jesus. There is no serious question about whether or not Jesus was a real human person. Paul does describe Jesus as the second Adam, the last Man. So doesn’t this require thinking Adam was a real historical person? Answer: No.
There is no possible way of ascertaining what Genesis Two and Three describe as actually happenings at the dawn of human history. Further, some of the aspects of those stories are clearly symbolical (a speaking serpent, a woman created out of a bone, a piece of fruit symbolizing sin, God walking in the garden, the location of the garden). Still further, the Apostle Paul in Romans 5, where he compares Adam and Jesus, says that Adam is a type of the one who is to come. So to abandon the notion of the historicity of Adam still allows us to retain the notion of this typological connection.
We can easily find the symbolical meaning of each element in the Adam stories, and then go on to see also the connection of that symbolism with Jesus. For example, in the story of the sin of Eve and Adam. The symbolism here is simply that this is a picture of us all; we all make the wrong choice apart from the Lord Jesus. We are all sinners. But Jesus faced his own temptations, and instead of yielding as did Eve and Adam, he resisted temptation because of his loyalty to his Father in heaven. That’s the typological connection. Jesus did what Adam and Eve failed to do, and what we fail to do, that is, obey God, so the significance of this is that faith in Jesus also results in our living in obedience to God.
We can do the same wih every one of incidents relating to Adam in Genesis, seeing first the symbolism involved and then the typological jump to see how that relates to Jesus and then to those who follow Jesus.
It makes perfect sense, but it does require us to be willing to give up some traditions. Why can’t we think of Adam in the way we think about cave men, before there was even language? The process that paleontologists are discovering about the provenance and development of the human race makes perfect sense. Why should it make us think it contradicts the Bible? All truth is from God, no matter who discovers it. Scientists have made mistakes, but so have theologians. Scientists work hard to correct them when they see them, and so should we when we see them. And that, to conclude, is what I have been doing to the best of my ability in my retirement years.
Also now to your latest missile. I suspect you are barking up the wrong tree: What does it take for me to give up faith in evolution? I do not have faith in evolution, I have faith in the God who created the world developmentally. As I see that Roger has also said. So your question comes across to me this way: What would it take for you to give up listening to God and listen to John Zylstra instead? It took God seventy or so years to get me to listen to him, and I am not about to stop now! So perhaps you may wish to consider the counter question, presented as bluntly as yours to me: What would it take, John, for you to give up your opposition to the truth? (By the way, I had a roommate in college by the name of Edwin Zylstra. Do you know him?)
Dear John, As I read the communiques you send I am getting the sense that you think that nature more or less functions on its own internal power, created of course by God, but that God is somehow out there watching so that at certain times he supernaturally intervenes, miraculously, to accomplish something that he wishes to do. I don’t know whether or not this represents your thinking, but if it does I have to say I do not think it is Biblical.
God isn’t just out there somewhere beyond our senses, popping in once in a while to make some adjustment in the world. He is everywhere present, omnipresent, active in everything that happens. That’s how he exercises his sovereignty, by the everyday and everywhere functions of the whole world, including human history. So when I say I want to listen to what God is saying in nature, this is what I mean. Trying to perceive just how he has been working throughout time and history, and still today in the world we live in. He speaks to us everywhere and in everything. That’s what it means to say God is the Creator and Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. He does not have to pop in from time to time if he is already here everywhere, active every moment in guiding the processes he puts into place.
I have been long impressed, for example, with the Genesis account of creation, in which we read mentioned ten times that God spoke, and each time he spoke something happened. When God speaks something happens. Vice-versa, when something happens God is speaking in it. Isaiah writes that the word of the Lord never returns to him without accomplishing that for which it is sent. That’s infallibility, by the way. So to observe what happens in nature and in life and in civilization and in history is at the same time to come into contact with what God is saying, and we need to do our best to listen, believe, and obey what God is saying. That is what I have been trying to do during my retirement years.
One other thing that bothers me about the things you write. You seem to be emphasizing the negative rather than the positive. You write at length about why this or that cannot happen in the world of science. But what about the things that have been discovered and that obtain the approval of the scientific community at large? I mean such items as the age of the universe and the planet earth, the process by which the universe as we know it is being shaped, the history of planet earth and the continents, ice ages etc. Maybe the genetic structures of chimps and humans are not 97% as you write, but what do we make of the similarity itself that is there?
Why would it be wrong to try to figure out a scenario to explain all such items, and if one comes up with a developmental scenario, why would that necessarily be wrong? Personally I have come up with a scenario that makes beautiful sense of it all, respecting both the Bible and what little I know of science. But it does require some rather difficult adjustments in the thought processes. Love.
John, You seem to get sidetracked on scientific matters with Roger when the subject I raised is theological. By the way I’m with Roger all the way on that issue. I don’t think you could persuade the younger generation of people that the earth is only 6000 + years old, any more than you could persuade them that the sun revolves around the earth. So I’d like to respond to something you raised theologically a while back, namely the question of sin. You explained in some detail how your mind would work if you accepted an evolutionary setting and tried to understand sin in that context. I respect the way your mind works but mine doesn’t work exactly that way. What is sin if we no longer define it in the context of an historical Eden and the traditional theology of a literal fall into sin from a state of perfection? A very valid and critical question. It does not mean a denial of sin as your scenario sort of suggests. A denial of our traditional doctrine of sin, yes, but in no way a denial of the reality of sin. Consider how the author of Genesis explains that way back in the origins of human history people became so bad that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. Then consider what our historians tell us about the ancient civilizations that they have studied: they are all based on violence, slavery, greed, self-centeredness, exploiting some people for the advantage of others, etc., evil of all kinds. Even such advanced cultures as those of Greece and Rome. The phrase, “man’s inhumanity to man,” says it well. That is sin. It’s not the way God wants us to live. So the reality is there, is it not? Even when we do not connect it all to a historical fall in the Garden of Eden. So sin is not merely how bad we treat each other but at the same time it is a missing of the mark with regard to how God created us to live. God created us to live as his image while we go about constructing our civilizations, but we aren’t doing it. That failure defines sin, not a mistake on the part of a first pair of humans. So Christianity and all it involves is the way God is providing the necessary remedy, the internal power of the Spirit of Holiness, to enable us to work successfully at becoming the kind of humans we are created to be. The overall process of history, accordingly, is the process whereby God is teaching us how to be images of God. History is the process of our learning how to be human, not guilty of “inhumanity to man.” Obviously we have a long way to go yet, but let’s not ignore the real progress that the gospel has made in this regard since the time of Jesus. Edwin Walhout
Posted in: Purposefully Putting Culture Before Christ
I would like to suggest that we take more seriously what we read in Genesis 1 about God creating humans to be his image, particularly in the matter of "subduing the earth." This means that God wants us as humans to create our civilizations in such a way that they incorporate the virtues of God such as honesty, love, justice, truth, etc. in the way our culture functions. History is the process of our learning how to do that, so that the closer any culture gets to this standard the more godly it will be. African cultures need, as to all cultures, to be analyzed in this respect. How truthful, just, loving, etc is our culture? Christianity exists for that purpose, to disciple the nations, as Christ commands us.
Edwin Walhout
Posted in: Can You Recommend a Good Devotional?
You can find a few more at www.edwinwalhout.com; on the book of Revelation, or the Psalms, or a few theological topics.
Posted in: Reformation Reflections
In addition to your notes, there is another perspective to add.
God used the Church of the Middle Ages to convert the barbarian tribes of Europe, a process pretty well completed by about 1000 A.D.
Also, and important, these converted nations were discipled to the extent that they had changed their national output from destructive (of the Roman Empire) to constructive (the renaissance). This would not have happened had the church not disciplined them as it did. But now, having achieved a measure of spiritual maturity, many of these peoples no longer required the rather arbitrary disciplinary measures of the Middle Ages, and broke away much the same way as young people, disciplined by their parents, break away from home to make their own way in life. We should see God's hand in this process, using the efforts of the church of the medieval period to further his kingdom. See not only the human defects but also and more important the sovereign grace of God in giving direction to the process of human history in Europe.
Edwin Walhout
Posted in: My Banner Article
John and Roger,
You both are surprised that I think God is succeeding in making the human race better. You point out a long list of evils, seemingly proving that we are getting worse instead of better. May I suggest that you have clearer eyes to see what Satan is doing than what God is doing? The evils you point out highlight the task that remains to be done, but it does nothing to delineate the progress the gospel is making.
Recall that Jesus said, prior to his ascension, that all authority in heaven and on earth belongs now to him. If the world is getting worse instead of better, would this not negate Jesus’ affirmation? We say now that Jesus sits at God’s right hand. What do you think that means? It means that God, who has absolute authority over everything he has created, is now exercising that authority by means of his “right hand man” Jesus, that is, by the gospel preached by the church and effectuated by the Holy Spirit.
Then, when we put all that in the context of Genesis One, image of God and cultural mandate, we see that God is slowly getting us, the human race, to learn how to be the humans God wants us to become. That includes everything we do, not only as individuals but also as nations and as an entire human race. Actually, it is precisely in the effect of the gospel on our cultural institutions that we must learn to see the power of Christ at work, not only in our personal lives. Are the United States and Canada more just societies than ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome? How can you doubt it? That is because the gospel has had enormous effect in transforming our barbarian ancestors in Europe into the constructive nations of the western world. The evils you point out, accordingly, point to the task remaining to be done.
Another item on a somewhat different tack. God is calling us today in the twenty-first century to listen to what he is saying via the scientific community. John, you are concerned with the gaps in scientific knowledge, rightly perhaps, but we need to listen when such matters as the age of the universe, the construction of the planets, the appearance of life, the provenance of the human race, and other dramatic breakthroughs such as the genome list – when these things are demonstrated to be true. I personally believe we need to adopt an entirely different paradigm around which to reconstruct our theology, a paradigm of developmentalism. You will both recognize that if we do that, then the notion of God guiding us into a better and better life by means of the gospel makes a lot more sense.
Edwin Walhout
Posted in: My Banner Article
John, you want me to respond. OK.
Item # 1. 1) The author </em>(Walhout<em>) frames the whole thing in a reading of history that is simply inaccurate. Purgatory, indulgences, relics, etc. did not form the "backbone of Christianity" 500 years ago. When these became too important, the Reformation happened. To put creation, sin and salvation (think Apostles Creed) on par with these is simply wrong.
Response. I believe in creation, sin and salvation. I also believe in the Apostles’ Creed. I would not put the items mentioned “on a par with” more important doctrines. I am simply affirming that the time has come when God is asking us to re-examine our traditional formulations in the light of scientific discoveries, and if found defective, to improve them. Who knows, it may even result in another upheaval the size of the Reformation?
Item # 2. 2) Apart from the concluding blurb from a synodical report, Walhout fails to mention anything about how the church has already been wrestling with these issues for the past 150 years. This includes the various ways Genesis 1 has been interpreted well before Darwin came along, the numerous scholars who have described Adam and Eve as the representative head of the human race, and the work of scholars today in wrestling with these questions (i.e. books and articles by the Haarsmas at Calvin College).
Response. It is because I have read these and similar books and articles that I have come to the conclusions I have. There isn’t room in one Banner article to summarize all that; I articulated the insights that such documents have suggested to me.
Item # 3. 3) This article lacks helpful distinctions, such as the difference between evolution and naturalism,
which help us ask and answer the important questions.
Response. What one person considers “the important questions” will probably vary from person to person. I addressed those that were important to me, and in my judgment important for the church as a whole to address. To expose what the article does not do may help some, but it would be much more helpful to address the items it does propose (as in the next item #4).
Item # 4. 4) He does suggest evolutionary theory calls for a reworking of doctrines like creation, sin and salvation. About sin, he says, "We will have to find a much better way of understanding what sin is, where it comes from, and what its consequences are. Theologians will have to find a new way of articulating a truly biblical doctrine of sin and what effect it has on us." In other words, evolutionary theory will enable theologians to be true to the Bible in our theological articulations. The implication being that now we will really understand the Bible. I think the problems in this are obvious. I am a bit floored that anyone in this forum might suggest that sin and salvaiton are not core doctrines of the Christian faith.
Response. I did not suggest that sin and salvation are not core doctrines of the Christian faith. They are. I simply suggested that we may need to find a better way of understanding them. The paradigm of developmentalism will help us to do that.
Item # 5. 5) The author makes a prediction about the future, a prophetic claim, if you will. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that we humans with our best sciences cannot predict the future. Unless Walhout
received this from God himself (including being from Scripture), he should not put this forward as something that will inevitably happen. Being a false prophet is a serious matter in the Bible."
Response. What prediction is he talking about? That people a millennium from now might look back on our times with amazement? If so, I do plead guilty. It’s interesting that he says history teaches us we cannot predict the future, but in this case I am pleading the actual precedent of history, the exact opposite of what my critic suggests! From where did I receive this? Where does anyone receive truth from? All truth is from God. So, in so far as my article is truthful, of course it comes from God. I think he misread the article if he says that I am predicting that it “will inevitably happen.” It appears to me that it will happen, but this is a far cry from inevitability. And his last comment. Indeed it is a serious matter to be a false prophet. However, perhaps my critic should raise a mirror. What if it turns out I am right and he is wrong? Would that make him the false prophet?
Edwin Walhout
Posted in: My Banner Article
You know, John, it is only of secondary importance for you to understand me or for me to understand you; what is of primary importance is for us together to understand God. I am hearing God speak to us via the scientific community, and, frankly, you appear reluctant to listen. You appear to be listening to what God said to our forefathers centuries ago but to be closing your ears to what God is saying to us now. Is it so strange that God might be asking us to move ahead in our thinking and in our obedience? You would not be wanting to close your ears if that were so.
Edwin Walhout
Posted in: My Banner Article
John, I apologize for the suggestion that you may not be listening to God. I did not intend to insult you, but I guess I did. You have a much right to say the same of me from your point of view. For whatever good it might do, I withdraw the comment. I’m sorry for it. We are all trying our best to listen for the truth that God has for us.
Further, I have nothing whatever to say in reply to your scientific insights. I have no expertise whatever in that field. I can only say I have been convinced by what Van Till wrote back in the early nineties and what the two Calvin profs wrote in the scientific journal a couple of years ago, and what I heard from a biologist about chimpanzees being 97% the same genetically as humans.
My concern is theology and Bible interpretation. And I do see progress, development, in the Bible. Genesis One describes the successive stages in the creation, moving step by step toward the shaping of the world as God wanted it to be. Each day’s work presupposes the work of the preceding day. That’s development, is it not?
Similarly the work of God in shaping the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. Abraham was called out of the polytheism of Babylon into monotheism, the one only God of Israel, Yahweh. That’s a good and necessary development. God gave Israel the Torah at Mount Sinai; that too is a step forward for them, shaping a coherent nation out of a group of slaves. The return from Babylonian captivity was also an advance, once for all eliminating idolatry from the people.
I think we need to see also that the ministry of Jesus is also a step forward in God’s plan to save the world, the extension of the gospel to all nations, not merely to the Jews. So I see also this same process continuing as the gospel overcomes all obstacles in the ancient Roman empire, resulting in 390 in Emperor Theodosius declaring Christianity to be the only legal religion in the empire. That’s progress, development. Then look at what the gospel did for the barbarian tribes that overran the empire. It transformed them from destructive to constructive, producing the beginnings of the western civilization which we have inherited.
You have constantly pointed out the failures and inadequacies and evils that still plague us. Nobody denies that. But for myself I keep looking at what God has done and what he is continuing to do, and I am confident that the work he has begun he will continue to do until such time as he determines will be the telos toward which he guides all things.
God’s work has encountered major setbacks all throughout history, but God always has a way of using those setbacks as the occasion for making a major step forward in his plan to get us as a human race to greater obedience. We can have all confidence that God will use the evil things you mention in order to have us rebound from them into a better world. That’s what I believe with all my heart. This is God’s world, not the devil’s.
Edwin Walhout
Posted in: My Banner Article
John, You write at the end, "But this is not a biological evolution. This is a spiritual renewal, a being born again, a dedication to God, and a fulfillment of God’s promise. It is wrong to conflate this with evolution in which God plays no visible role, or in which God cannot intervene.<"/p>
I trust that you are not suggesting I am defending a concept of evolution in which God plays no role. I am suggesting that the process of the physical development of the universe since the beginning of time can be characterized as the way God has brought the world to the condition it is in today, and that this guidance, this sovereign control, applies as well to the control of human history as well, all of this working steadily toward the telos God has in mind for the future.
Edwin Walhout
Posted in: My Banner Article
John, in your last sentence you speak of "undirected macro-evolution." But what about "directed macro-evolution?" Directed of course by the Creator God as in Genesis One and throughout the Bible. Which, to my unscientific mind, would be what appears to be truthful Biblically. Do you suppose God could have employed such a developmental method to bring the world and the human race to the point at which we are today? My theological concern has been what effect, if any, would such a development have on our traditional theological definitions. There doesn't seem to be a meeting of the minds on that point.
Edwin Walhout
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Well, John, I am somewhat puzzled by how to respond to you. You keep throwing at me all kinds of scientific items that simply go over my head and to which I cannot respond one way or another. On the other hand you are now presenting a lot of theological problems that you see with what what you think I believe.
I have worked my way through many questions similar to those you raise. It wasn’t easy and didn’t come quickly, but I have come to a new vision of how God works that seems to me to be a much better way of understanding human history than our traditions present. Frankly, it does not appear to me from what you write that you are really asking for help in working your way through those questions. It seems rather that you are raising them, not for your benefit, but for destroying my insights.
That being said, let me say something about Adam and Jesus. There is no serious question about whether or not Jesus was a real human person. Paul does describe Jesus as the second Adam, the last Man. So doesn’t this require thinking Adam was a real historical person? Answer: No.
There is no possible way of ascertaining what Genesis Two and Three describe as actually happenings at the dawn of human history. Further, some of the aspects of those stories are clearly symbolical (a speaking serpent, a woman created out of a bone, a piece of fruit symbolizing sin, God walking in the garden, the location of the garden). Still further, the Apostle Paul in Romans 5, where he compares Adam and Jesus, says that Adam is a type of the one who is to come. So to abandon the notion of the historicity of Adam still allows us to retain the notion of this typological connection.
We can easily find the symbolical meaning of each element in the Adam stories, and then go on to see also the connection of that symbolism with Jesus. For example, in the story of the sin of Eve and Adam. The symbolism here is simply that this is a picture of us all; we all make the wrong choice apart from the Lord Jesus. We are all sinners. But Jesus faced his own temptations, and instead of yielding as did Eve and Adam, he resisted temptation because of his loyalty to his Father in heaven. That’s the typological connection. Jesus did what Adam and Eve failed to do, and what we fail to do, that is, obey God, so the significance of this is that faith in Jesus also results in our living in obedience to God.
We can do the same wih every one of incidents relating to Adam in Genesis, seeing first the symbolism involved and then the typological jump to see how that relates to Jesus and then to those who follow Jesus.
It makes perfect sense, but it does require us to be willing to give up some traditions. Why can’t we think of Adam in the way we think about cave men, before there was even language? The process that paleontologists are discovering about the provenance and development of the human race makes perfect sense. Why should it make us think it contradicts the Bible? All truth is from God, no matter who discovers it. Scientists have made mistakes, but so have theologians. Scientists work hard to correct them when they see them, and so should we when we see them. And that, to conclude, is what I have been doing to the best of my ability in my retirement years.
Also now to your latest missile. I suspect you are barking up the wrong tree: What does it take for me to give up faith in evolution? I do not have faith in evolution, I have faith in the God who created the world developmentally. As I see that Roger has also said. So your question comes across to me this way: What would it take for you to give up listening to God and listen to John Zylstra instead? It took God seventy or so years to get me to listen to him, and I am not about to stop now! So perhaps you may wish to consider the counter question, presented as bluntly as yours to me: What would it take, John, for you to give up your opposition to the truth? (By the way, I had a roommate in college by the name of Edwin Zylstra. Do you know him?)
Edwin Walhout
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Dear John, As I read the communiques you send I am getting the sense that you think that nature more or less functions on its own internal power, created of course by God, but that God is somehow out there watching so that at certain times he supernaturally intervenes, miraculously, to accomplish something that he wishes to do. I don’t know whether or not this represents your thinking, but if it does I have to say I do not think it is Biblical.
God isn’t just out there somewhere beyond our senses, popping in once in a while to make some adjustment in the world. He is everywhere present, omnipresent, active in everything that happens. That’s how he exercises his sovereignty, by the everyday and everywhere functions of the whole world, including human history. So when I say I want to listen to what God is saying in nature, this is what I mean. Trying to perceive just how he has been working throughout time and history, and still today in the world we live in. He speaks to us everywhere and in everything. That’s what it means to say God is the Creator and Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth. He does not have to pop in from time to time if he is already here everywhere, active every moment in guiding the processes he puts into place.
I have been long impressed, for example, with the Genesis account of creation, in which we read mentioned ten times that God spoke, and each time he spoke something happened. When God speaks something happens. Vice-versa, when something happens God is speaking in it. Isaiah writes that the word of the Lord never returns to him without accomplishing that for which it is sent. That’s infallibility, by the way. So to observe what happens in nature and in life and in civilization and in history is at the same time to come into contact with what God is saying, and we need to do our best to listen, believe, and obey what God is saying. That is what I have been trying to do during my retirement years.
One other thing that bothers me about the things you write. You seem to be emphasizing the negative rather than the positive. You write at length about why this or that cannot happen in the world of science. But what about the things that have been discovered and that obtain the approval of the scientific community at large? I mean such items as the age of the universe and the planet earth, the process by which the universe as we know it is being shaped, the history of planet earth and the continents, ice ages etc. Maybe the genetic structures of chimps and humans are not 97% as you write, but what do we make of the similarity itself that is there?
Why would it be wrong to try to figure out a scenario to explain all such items, and if one comes up with a developmental scenario, why would that necessarily be wrong? Personally I have come up with a scenario that makes beautiful sense of it all, respecting both the Bible and what little I know of science. But it does require some rather difficult adjustments in the thought processes. Love.
Edwin Walhout
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John, You seem to get sidetracked on scientific matters with Roger when the subject I raised is theological. By the way I’m with Roger all the way on that issue. I don’t think you could persuade the younger generation of people that the earth is only 6000 + years old, any more than you could persuade them that the sun revolves around the earth.
So I’d like to respond to something you raised theologically a while back, namely the question of sin. You explained in some detail how your mind would work if you accepted an evolutionary setting and tried to understand sin in that context. I respect the way your mind works but mine doesn’t work exactly that way.
What is sin if we no longer define it in the context of an historical Eden and the traditional theology of a literal fall into sin from a state of perfection? A very valid and critical question. It does not mean a denial of sin as your scenario sort of suggests. A denial of our traditional doctrine of sin, yes, but in no way a denial of the reality of sin.
Consider how the author of Genesis explains that way back in the origins of human history people became so bad that every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. Then consider what our historians tell us about the ancient civilizations that they have studied: they are all based on violence, slavery, greed, self-centeredness, exploiting some people for the advantage of others, etc., evil of all kinds. Even such advanced cultures as those of Greece and Rome. The phrase, “man’s inhumanity to man,” says it well. That is sin. It’s not the way God wants us to live. So the reality is there, is it not? Even when we do not connect it all to a historical fall in the Garden of Eden. So sin is not merely how bad we treat each other but at the same time it is a missing of the mark with regard to how God created us to live. God created us to live as his image while we go about constructing our civilizations, but we aren’t doing it. That failure defines sin, not a mistake on the part of a first pair of humans.
So Christianity and all it involves is the way God is providing the necessary remedy, the internal power of the Spirit of Holiness, to enable us to work successfully at becoming the kind of humans we are created to be. The overall process of history, accordingly, is the process whereby God is teaching us how to be images of God. History is the process of our learning how to be human, not guilty of “inhumanity to man.” Obviously we have a long way to go yet, but let’s not ignore the real progress that the gospel has made in this regard since the time of Jesus.
Edwin Walhout