Category Archives: Hermeneutics

Trusting the Bible and Accepting Evolution—Call me Crazy!

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I just returned from Cornell University, where I gave a joint-presentation entitled “Origins, Self, and Soul” with Praveen Sethupathy, a Christian geneticist on the faculty of Cornell.

Our presentation, which addressed biblical and evolutionary perspectives on human origins and identity, was co-sponsored by Chesterton House, a Christian study center near the Cornell campus, and the Cornell Graduate Christian Fellowship.

The implicit question we addressed was whether it is possible to be a faithful Christian and accept an evolutionary account of human origins.

Whereas Praveen brought a scientist’s perspective, my portion of the presentation focused on what the Bible tells us about human commonality with animals and about what it means to be created in God’s image, which is usually taken as something unique to humans.

I wasn’t able to cover very much in the twenty minutes allotted to me.

However, those twenty minutes were part of longer presentation that I have given on the topic of the Bible and evolution, which covered a larger scope.

The last time I gave the full presentation was in May 2018, when I participated in a conference sponsored by the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation (CSCA), held at Trinity Western University, in Langley, BC.

I was one of six plenary presenters. The presenters all came from different disciplines and addressed aspects of the intersection of faith and the sciences.

Can We Believe the Bible and Accept Evolution?

As the biblical scholar of the lot, my talk focused on biblical themes. Given the nature of the conference (and my interest in the faith-science interface on matters of origins), I attempted to relate the biblical themes of human distinctiveness and the origin of evil to what the sciences are telling us about our evolutionary origins.

I began by highlighting a number of tensions that Christians have perceived between the Bible and an evolutionary account of human origins. Then I suggested that these tensions are not necessary, but have to do with the way in which we read the Bible.

So I engaged in some serious Bible study.

My talk was videotaped and astutely edited together with my PowerPoint slides. The entire talk (with slides) can be viewed here.

Part 1: Human Distinctiveness

In part 1 of the talk, I addressed how the Bible understands the commonality of humans with other animals (in a variety of creation texts from Genesis, Job, and the Psalms), which suggests that we shouldn’t have an aversion to the idea of common descent. Then I explored the Bible’s teaching about humanity as the image of God (found in Genesis 1:26–28 and related texts). I speculated how the human calling to image God might be related to what science is telling us about human origins.

Part 2: The Origin of Evil

In part 2 of the talk, I focused on the portrayal of the origin of evil in Genesis 2–3, probing the way in which this portrayal is true to human experience and represents a profound phenomenology of temptation and sin. Then I picked up on my earlier speculation about the image of God and evolutionary origins, and added a suggestion for how human evil could have entered the evolutionary process.

I thus did what many Christians claim it is impossible. I attempted to affirm both an evolutionary account of human origins and the biblical teaching on human distinctiveness and a historical fall.

Call me crazy. But I respect God’s revelation in Scripture and God’s revelation in creation, which can be studied by science. I can’t deny either.

In fact, I believe that God is revealed—and glorified—in the evolutionary complexity of the biological world.

Insightful Devotional: “Called to Indwell the Earth”

At the conference we had a wonderful devotional one morning given by Patrick Franklin, current vice-president of the Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation, and newly appointed associate professor of theology at Tyndale Seminary, in Toronto.

You can watch Patrick Franklin’s talk here.

Recordings of Other Talks at the Conference

You can see the entire conference schedule of keynote speakers and breakout sessions here.

All the keynote talks and some of the breakout sessions were recorded. You can find links to them here.

 

Peace and Violence in Scripture and Theology (October 2018 Conference of the Canadian-American Theological Association)

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The Canadian-American Theological Association is having their annual Fall theology conference at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, on October 20, 2018.

The conference, co-sponsored with Wycliffe College, will focus on the theme:

PEACE AND VIOLENCE IN SCRIPTURE AND THEOLOGY

Dr. Gordon K. Oeste will deliver the keynote lecture, Feasting with the Enemy: Redemptive Readings of Biblical War Texts.

Dr. Oeste, the Teaching Pastor at Cedar Creek Community Church in Cambridge, Ontario, is the author of Legitimacy, Illegitimacy, and the Right to Rule: Windows on Abimelech’s Rise and Demise in Judges 9 (Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2013). He is currently co-authoring a book on warfare in the Bible.

A panoply of papers will be presented from all theological disciplines on subjects related to Peace and Violence in Scripture and Theology, as well as other subjects that engage culture, the church, and various academic fields.

The conference runs from 8:45 a.m. until 4:00 p.m., and twenty-six papers are scheduled for presentation.

You may download the full conference schedule here.

For online registration, please go to: https://www.wycliffecollege.ca/cata

Our Fall CATA conference promises to be a very full and enriching day that  will offer new ideas and stimulating discussion with scholars,  students, and  laity.

For more information, please email mtaylor@wycliffe.utoronto.ca

Co-sponsored by: Wycliffe College and The Canadian-American Theological Association Location: Wycliffe College, 5 Hoskin Avenue, Toronto M5S 1H7.

Death and the Curse in the Garden of Eden—and Beyond

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A new online article that I wrote on the topic of death in the Garden of Eden has now been posted to the website of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding.

Here is a summary of the article:

It has been a common (though not universal) assumption in the history of Christian thought that humans were created immortal, and only lost their immortality with the entrance of death as the consequence for sin. This is, however, a misreading of the biblical data, which suggests that humans were created mortal with the possibility of attaining eternal life—a possibility that was lost through sin and is now realized in Jesus Christ.

Were Humans Mortal before the Fall?

The article is published in an online journal of the Henry Center called Sapientia, in the Areopagite forum (the Aereopagus was the meeting place in Athens where Paul preached in Acts 17).

My piece is the first in a series of blog posts that were invited to respond to the question Were humans mortal before the fall? Each blog post will give a different author’s perspective on this issue.

The Creation Project

I’ve been involved for three years now with the Creation Project of the Henry Center, which has explored the themes of Reading Genesis (2016), the Doctrine of Creation (2017), and Theological Anthropology (2018).

Each summer (in June) the Creation Project has run a conference (called Dabar, Hebrew for “word”) on the topic for the year, held on the site of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, near Chicago.

At the first two Dabar conferences I gave paper responses, first to a paper on Genesis 1–11 (2016) and then to a paper on God as an Agent (2017).

Death, Immortality, and the Curse

This year (2018) I was invited to write a paper for the conference, which will have two respondents (one by a theologian, the other by a biblical scholar). I’ve been asked to give a brief response to my respondents.

My paper is entitled: “Death, Immortality, and the Curse: Interpreting Genesis 2–3 in the Context of the Biblical Worldview.”

It’s an expansion of the shorter Sapientia article, attempting to connect the discussion of death and mortality (from that article) with the broader “ecological” picture of how humans affect the non-human world for good or ill, which is first articulated by the “curse” on the ground because of human sin (Genesis 3:17).

The shorter article, entitled “Humans Created Mortal, with the Possibility of Eternal Life,” is available online.

My Ambiguous Relationship with Carl Henry

For those interested, you can check out the blog post I wrote in anticipation of attending the first Dabar conference (2016), where I recounted my initial (unpleasant) encounter with Carl Henry over twenty years before.

Luckily, my experience with the Henry Center has been much more positive than that early encounter. In my evaluation of the 2016 conference, I wrote:

“I found the atmosphere of the Dabar conference to be collegial and open. While the presenters, respondents, and other participants did not agree on everything, there was a welcoming hospitality between everyone, regardless of viewpoint.”

I later recounted my experience of the second Dabar conference (2017), where I was a respondent to philosopher Billy Abraham.

I’m very much looking forward to this year’s conference.