Saturday, April 14, 2012

Doug Wilson Responds to Tim Keller's Series on Evolution and Creation

Tim Keller wrote a six-part series of articles for BioLogos entitled "Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople." In those articles he addressed several questions regarding creation and evolution, discussing the relationship of biblical revelation and science.

After reading Keller's series, Doug Wilson had some questions of his own:
Keller does a fine job in stating the most formidable objection to theistic evolution, but then provides no adequate answer for it whatever. He says, "The process of evolution, however, understands violence, predation, and death to be the very engine of how life develops. If God brings about life through evolution, how do we reconcile that with the idea of a good God? The problem of evil seems to be worse for the believer in theistic evolution." If, as I believe, the answer to this dilemma is that we can't, Keller appears to grant this point by default because what I say we can't do, he doesn't do.

The reason for postulating millions of years of life on this planet is to provide an account for the fossil record. But the fossil record is made up entirely of bodies. It is a graveyard record. It is a record of death. But this means that Adam did not bring death into the world -- rather death brought Adam into the world. But Paul says that it was the other way around (Rom. 5:12). Moreover this would mean that God settled on millions of years of "nature red in tooth and claw" as His ideal means of creation -- entirely apart from any sin or rebellion on anyone's part -- and that He looked down on this agonistic morass and pronounced it good. Talk about the problem of evil.

Since the work of the Church in this world is the restoration of Eden, it is worth noting that theistic evolution mandates a complete reversal of the definition of creational good. It turns out that Eden was as bloody as the post fall world. What did we fall into then?
Read Wilson's full post here.

2 comments:

  1. Charles Spurgeon had no problem with an old Earth or death before Adam's sin. Why should we?

    http://www.oldearth.org/spurgeon/spurgeon.htm

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  2. Did no-one respond to this one-liner? My one-line response is: Our authority is the Bible, not what some preached, no matter how respected,may or may not have said.

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