Gender Identity, The Fall, and God's Good Creation

Jerry Brown, the Governor of California wound up in the news recently for signing legislation that allows "equal access" in schools for students who believe themselves to be "transgendered." That is, students in California schools who believe that they are not the gender into which they were born, will have the option to use whichever restroom they choose. This same access will be accommodated by athletic teams as well. For instance, a boy who feels himself to be a girl will be allowed to try out for the girl's volleyball or soccer teams. The complexities and moral hazards for such an arrangement are legion.

Russell Moore, the newly appointed President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, has written a helpful piece for the Washington Post.

Dr. Moore writes:

Laws such as those in California will quickly test the boundaries of society’s tolerance for a psychological and individualistic definition of gender. There are reasons, after all, why societies put boys and girls in different bathrooms, men and women on different sports teams.  When gender identity is severed from biological sex, where does one’s self-designation end, and who will be harmed in the process?

As conservative Christians, we do not see transgendered persons as ”freaks” to be despised or ridiculed. We acknowledge that there are some persons who feel alienated from their identities as men or as women. Of course that would be the case in a fallen universe in which all of us are alienated, in some way, from how God created us to be.

But we don’t believe this alienation can be solved by pretending as though we have Pharaoh-like dominion over our maleness or femaleness. These categories we believe (along with every civilization before us) are about more than just self-construction, and they can’t be eradicated by a change of clothes or chemical tinkering or a surgeon’s knife, much less by an arbitrary announcement in the high school gym.

The transgender question means that conservative Christian congregations such as mine must teach what’s been handed down to us, that our maleness and femaleness points us to an even deeper reality, to the unity and complementarity of Christ and the church. A rejection of the goodness of those creational realities then is a revolt against God’s lordship, and against the picture of the gospel that God had embedded in the creation.

Read the entire article HERE.

Science and the Authority of the Bible

From Justin Taylor:

You can watch the full 1 hour and 15 minute discussion here, with Michael Horton, Stephen Meyer, R.C. Sproul Jr., and Del Tackett joining R.C. Sproul to answer questions about the Christian mind, science, old and new earth, and more.

For those interested in these questions, especially from a Reformed perspective, I would recommend reading the PCA Study Committee Report on Creation (2000), where a number of PCA elders from various persuasions on these issues studied and debated these issues in order to produce this report. It is worth reading simply for the definitions, and also for the way in which they seek to describe the strengths of, and objections to, the various orthodox positions.

Enns, Evolution, and Al Mohler

Dr. Jim Hamilton has written two helpful posts (here and here) responding to some recent comments from Peter Enns on evolution and the reliability of the Bible. Along the way Dr. Enns takes issue with Al Mohler's commitment to the reliability of the biblical record of origins.

The Language of God and the historicity of Adam

It is lengthy but Dr. Ardel Caneday's article in the latest issue of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology is worth the read. Dr. Caneday challenges those within evangelicalism who are now dismissing the Bible's teachings concerning the historicity of Adam and the Fall.

Check it out HERE.

Ex Nihilo

"Theistic evolution is a biblical and theological disaster." So writes Dr. Al Mohler in the latest edition of magazine of Southern Seminary. The theme of the current edition is "Ex Nihilo," or "out of nothing."

Check it out and pay special attention to the following articles:

The New Shape of the Debate by Al Mohler

The New Atheism and the Dogma of Darwinism by Al Mohler

All Things Dark and Terrible by Russell Moore

Evolution and Creation in Higher Education by Mark Coppenger

Creation and American Christianity by Gregory Wills

Theological Quicksand

Once the authority of Scripture is dismissed in some things it is not long before it will be dismissed in all things.

Karl Giberson over at Biologos continues to reveal more of his theological cards. This is no surprise to those who have been warning about the theological quicksand of subordinating biblical authority to scientific paradigms. So, in a sense, Giberson has done us a favor with his latest articles at Biologos.

Al Mohler comments on Giberson's latest, but not surprising assertion that "science does indeed trump religious truth about the natural world."

The folks at BioLogos continue with a fierce intensity to press their case for theistic evolution. In so doing, they are making the arguments that are essential to their case that Christianity and evolutionary theory are compatible. The arguments they are now making are integral to their cause, and they are amazingly, even breathtakingly candid.

In a recent article series responding to atheistic scientist Jerry Coyne, Professor Karl Giberson of Eastern Nazarene College rejects Coyne’s insistence that evolution precludes theism. Coyne, one of Darwin’s most ardent defenders, seems to operate under the quaint idea that Christians are marked by belief in an interventionist God and a confidence that the Bible is true.

Coyne also seems to believe that Christian theologians are not deists, and he is profoundly right. He wrote of “some theologians with a deistic bent,” who insist that evolution and Christianity are compatible, but who are in no way representative of true Christianity. Sometimes it takes an atheist to see the truth in a theological argument. Coyne strikes gold when he writes: “The reason that many liberal theologians see religion and evolution as harmonious is that they espouse a theology not only alien but unrecognizable as religion to most Americans.”

Coyne is one of the most recognized authorities on evolution in the world today. He sees those who argue for an accommodation of evolutionary science and religious belief as either dishonest or delusional. He is increasingly frustrated with scientists who make what he sees as a fallacious argument — that Christianity and evolution can be reconciled. “Attempts to reconcile God and evolution keep rolling off the intellectual assembly line,” he laments. “It never stops, because the reconciliation never works.”

In a five-part series at BioLogos, Professor Giberson seeks to refute Coyne’s argument. Now, Professor Giberson does land a few well-placed intellectual punches on Coyne’s absolute naturalism, but he does great damage to the Christian faith in so doing. At the same time, he ends up proving Coyne’s central point.

Read Mohler's entire post HERE.

Piper on Genesis 1-2

Piper's three key points:

1) We should teach without any qualification that God created the universe and everything in it. It wasn't always here. It didn't spontaneously emerge from a big bang alone, however God did it. God did it. That's clear, and everybody who believes the Word should preach that.

2) Secondly, I think we should preach that he made it good. There was no sin in it, when he first made it.

3) Thirdly, I think we should preach that he created Adam and Eve directly, that he made them of the dust of the ground, and he took out of man a woman. I think we should teach that. I know there are people who don't, who think it's all imagery for evolution or whatever.

And we should teach that man had his beginning not millions of years ago but within the scope of the biblical genealogies. Those genealogies are tight at about 6,000 years and loose at maybe 10 or 15,000. So I think we should honor those genealogies and not say that you can play fast and loose with the origin of man.

That's not the age of the earth issue there. That's the origin of what is a human being, when did that human being come into existence. I think we should say he came into existence by God's direct action and that it wasn't millions of years ago. That was within the scope of these genealogies.

Now, when it comes to the more controversial issues of how to construe Genesis 1-2 about how God did it and how long it took him to do it, there I'm totally sympathetic with a pastor who is going to lay his view down, having studied it, and is going to say to his people, "Here is my understanding of those chapters. These six days can't be anything other than six literal days, and so that's how long God took to do it. And this universe is about 10 or 15,000 years old. Though it looks old, that's the way God made it. He made it to look old," or something like that.

Or he might take another view that these days are ages.

Or he might take Sailhamer's view, which is where I feel at home. His view is that what's going on here is that all of creation happened to prepare the land for man.

In verse 1, "In the beginning he made the heavens and the earth," he makes everything. And then you go day by day and he's preparing the land. He's not bringing new things into existence; he's preparing the land and causing things to grow and separating out water and earth. And then, when it's all set and prepared, he creates and puts man there.

Evolution is God's Pink Slip

So says the world's most lovable atheist Richard Dawkins.

From Al Mohler:

The Wall Street Journal may be an unusual venue for theological debate, but this past weekend's edition featured just that -- a theological debate of sorts. The "of sorts" is a necessary qualifier in this instance, because The Wall Street Journal's debate was not, as advertised, a debate between an atheist and a believer. Instead, it was a debate between two different species of atheists.

The paper's "Weekend Journal" section front page for the September 12-13, 2009 edition featured articles by Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong set in opposing columns. The paper headlined the feature as "Man vs. God: Two Prominent Thinkers Debate Evolution, Science, and the Role of Religion." Well, the feature at least looked interesting.

Dawkins, after all, is probably the world's most famous atheist. At the same time (and not coincidentally, he would insist) he is also the world's foremost defender of Darwin and evolutionary theory. Karen Armstrong is a popularizer of works on world religion. She takes a basically benign view of religion, arguing that the different religions of the world are avenues toward the same quest for meaning. A former nun, she has written several books on themes and figures related to Islam, and she is a critic of what she terms "fundamentalist" religion. She is a critic of "fundamentalism" on whom the media can depend for comment.

The paper presented the articles by Dawkins and Armstrong in an interesting format. The article by Dawkins is headlined, "Evolution Leaves God with Nothing to Do." Armstrong's essay is headlined, "We Need to Grasp the Wonder of Our Existence."

Predictably, Dawkins begins his article with Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. Evolution, Dawkins claims, has simply displaced God. "Evolution is the universe's greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated," he asserts. Quoting a T-shirt, Dawkins insists that evolution "is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town." As for God, evolution just renders deity a useless and vacuous concept. "Where does that leave God?," Dawkins asks. "The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear."

Evolution, he continues (presumably less kindly), "is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip." God, who never existed in the first place, has now been fired.

Read the entire post HERE.

Oldest Animal Fossils Found in Lakes

There is an interesting article on a recent find in South China.

Charles Choi writes:

Conventional wisdom has it that the first animals evolved in the ocean.

Now researchers studying ancient rock samples in South China have found that the first animal fossils are preserved in ancient lake deposits, not in marine sediments as commonly assumed.

These new findings not only raise questions as to where the earliest animals were living, but what factors drove animals to evolve in the first place.

For some 3 billion years, single-celled life forms such as bacteria dominated the planet. Then, roughly 600 million years ago, the first multi-cellular animals appeared on the scene, diversifying rapidly.

The oldest known animal fossils in the world are preserved in South China's Doushantuo Formation. These fossil beds have no adult specimens - instead, many of the fossils appear to be microscopic embryos.

"Our first unusual finding in this region was the abundance of a clay mineral called smectite," said researcher Tom Bristow, now at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "In rocks of this age, smectite is normally transformed into other types of clay. The smectite in these South China rocks, however, underwent no such transformation and have a special chemistry that, for the smectite to form, requires specific conditions in the water - conditions commonly found in salty, alkaline lakes.

"The researchers collected hundreds of rock samples from several locations in South China. All their analyses suggest these rocks were not marine sediments.

"Moreover, we found smectite in only some locations in South China, and not uniformly as one would expect for marine deposits," Bristow said. "Taken together, several lines of evidence indicated to us that these early animals lived in a lake environment."

Read the entire article HERE.

I'll be honest. I'm not a big fan of the creation science movement. In my opinion they tend to insist that the Bible says more about scientific matters than it truly does. For instance I am satisfied that the biblical record does not insist upon a relatively young earth. But some of my brothers in the creation science movement read the biblical genealogies in a wooden literal sense. By this standard they reason that the Bible teaches that the earth must be approximately ten thousand years old. This presupposes that the biblical genealogies are not abridged or abbreviated which in fact was a common practice.

There is also the matter of the creation account itself. Does the biblical language insist on a single week of seven 24 hour "days"? Some insist that it does. I do not believe the Bible insists on such a time frame. That said, I do not think we should be dogmatic on the issue. We certainly should not divide over the issue. I believe God created man uniquely. I do not believe mankind evolved from lower life forms (although there are godly, Bible believing people who do). Also, I believe Adam and Eve were historical figures and the garden a real place and the fall as described in Genesis a real event.

The reason I linked to the article on the discovery of ancient fossils in a lake environment is that it underscores the need for humility in the discipline of scientific research. The discoveries in South China depart from the conventional wisdom regarding evolution. Scientific paradigms seem to be in a state of frequent flux. What is "settled science" one day may have to be completely rethought the next. I offer this as a word of caution against whatever tendency we may have to subordinate the Bible to the changing paradigms in paleontology.

God of Creation

Living in Genesis for months has been incredibly rewarding. It is a thrill to see all of the doctrines of the New Testament in seed form in the first book of the Bible. One of the books I have been studying is "The Gospel of Genesis" by Warren Gage of Knox Theological Seminary. Earlier this afternoon I was reading some of his thoughts on the opening words of Genesis. I pass them along to you.

"Creation from nothing is a power proper to diety (John 1:3). It is the jewel in God's crown; it constitutes the divine claim to universal kingship. The creation trumpets God's imperial majesty for heaven is his throne and earth his footstool (Isa. 66:1). Creation heralds God's royal counsel for he established the world by wisdom and stretched out the heavens by understanding (Prov. 3:19). Creation presents the king with royal honor for the heavens declare his glory and the earth speaks his praise (Ps. 19:1). Creation also reveals the sovereignty of his scepter for upon earth must his will be done as in heaven (Matt. 6:10) and all things, in heaven and earth, must finally be summed up in his Son (Eph. 1:10)...

"Though the doctrine of creation is the cornerstone of biblical revelation, to unbelief it has ever been a stone of stumbling. Scripture teaches that the world was born of the womb of God's will, fashioned from the frame of nothing (Heb. 11:3). Consequently, the creation is everlastingly distinguished from its Creator and ever dependent upon him. Scripture also affirms that all men know from nature both of God's eternal power and divine person, though they suppress such natural testimony through unbelief (Rom. 1:20). Those who would follow persently popular 'scientific' alternatives to biblical creationism inevitably find themselves transferring these two universals from the Creator to the creation, for to accommodate their theories they ascribe a practical eternality to the creation and invest the impersonal universe with notions of purposive progress. Thus the creation itself is invested with the eternal power and divine person of the Creator and the glory of the incorruptible God is changed for the image of man, birds, beasts and creeping things. Professing to be wise the secularists become vain in the their reasonings and their new science merely perpetuates the ancient mysteries. The priest of nature survives in the evolutionist, the priest of mammon masquerades as the naturalist, and the priest of man has become the secularism of today and the dawn of the modern scientific age finds the sun rising upon nothing new" (p. 76).

In The Beginning

This is an exellent forum on the importance of the doctrine of creation from the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology (http://www.sbts.edu/pdf/sbjt/SBJT_2007Spring6.pdf).