The ‘problem’ of evil and the supremacy of Scripture - II Theological gymnastics result in placing ‘science’ as an authority over Scripture
[Last week, part I referred to the work of evangelical Philosophy Professor William Dembski, who acknowledges that the Bible plainly teaches that death and suffering entered the world through Adam’s sin, but who acknowledges that the fossils show death and suffering, and wants to keep the compromise idea of ‘millions of years’. So what is his ‘solution ’?]
The Fall was also retroactive!
Mankind’s Fall into sin, he argues, was not only proactive (marring the creation since Adam) but was also retroactive. Yes, that’s right! All the natural and moral evil in the world, since time began, are due to Adam’s sin, even though Adam didn’t rebel until very ‘late’ in the chronological time frame! He argues that God’s time is kairological—from the Greek word for time, ‘kairos’ (as in ‘a welcome time’, ’the right time’), as distinct from ‘chronos’ which is time by which we set clocks, compute chronology, etc. The Fall, argues Dembski, must be understood in this way. Only then can we solve the dilemma of death and suffering ‘before’ the Fall.
Test an idea by its fruit
Predictably, however, seeing the Fall in this new ‘light’ means that other plain truths of Scripture must be explained away. Aside from the fact that this is yet another attempt to avoid the plain teaching of the Bible (when it does not fit with one’s mental environment), Dembski’s retroactive view of the Fall is ultimately bizarre:
“Accordingly, the Fall could take place after the natural evils for which it is responsible. … Likewise, an omnipotent God unbound by time can make natural evil predate the Fall and yet make the Fall the reason for natural evil.” (p. 50)
Dembski claims that there is a theological precedent for such a reading of Genesis 1–3 because “the saving effects of the Cross … are held to act not only forward in time but also backward” (p. 50). However, this is completely unconvincing —Scripture does teach that the work of Jesus’ redemption, wrought at the Cross, transcends time but never hints at anything resembling Dembski’s thesis regarding the Fall of Man. Consider the following assertion (p. 145): “To make us realize the full extent of human sin, God … allows natural evils (e.g. death, predation, parasitism, disease, drought, floods, famines, earthquakes, and hurricanes) to run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself wills the disordering of creation, making it defective on purpose.” In other words, God did this in advance, pre-empting the rebellion of Adam hundreds of millions of years before he would even exist. If so, He actively cursed the real world with disease, decay, death and relentless suffering for untold eons prior (chronologically) to the existence of morally culpable human beings!
But what of God’s declaration in Gen. 1:31, that everything was “very good”? Were Adam and Eve not duped if the world around them was, in fact, full of corruption and death? He even recognises, of course, that the historic Fall occurs chronologically in space and time but his solution to the dilemma posed by his theodicy really takes the cake:
“This seems to raise a difficulty, however, because humans who have yet to sin come into a world where natural evil is already raging. Starting their materialistic existence in such a world puts them at a disadvantage, tempting and opposing them with evils for which they are not (yet) responsible. The Garden of Eden, as a segregated area in which the effects of natural evil are not evident (one might think of it as a tropical paradise), provides the way out of this difficulty” (p. 151, my emphasis). “In the Garden of Eden … the originally intended perfect world, there are no pathogenic microbes and, correspondingly, there is no need for Adam and Eve to have an immune system… In the imperfect world [bordering Eden on every side], whose imperfection results from God’s acting to anticipate the Fall, both pathogenic microbes and human immune systems exist. Yet, in their Garden experience, Adam and Even never become conscious of that difference” (p. 153).
But, far from resolving Dembski’s dilemma, a far greater difficulty is created by this suggestion, one which he appears not to have considered; God is now guilty of deliberate deception because His words about the perfection of “everything He had made” is rendered utterly hollow and false!
Sop to evolutionists
Dembski makes clear that theistic evolutionists can adopt his theodicy too, as long as they take on board his explanation of Eden. Adam and Eve, in this view, are soul-less humans that God takes from the corrupted world and places in the perfect garden. “Any evils humans experience outside the Garden before God breathes into them the breath of life would be experienced as natural evils in the same way that other animals experience them. The pain would be real, but it would not be experienced as divine justice in response to wilful rebellion. Moreover, once God breathes the breath of life into them [and places them in Eden], we may assume that the first humans experienced an amnesia of their former animal life” (p. 155, my emphasis).
Again, how does God avoid the charge of deception in this view? I do not want to cast doubt on the sincerity of Dembski’s faith, but human ingenuity is a very poor substitute for faithful acceptance of God’s Word. And if this doesn’t seem to sit right with my mental environment, it is the latter that must change—my mind must be brought captive to the Word of God. Tragically, Dembski’s arguments attempt to make Scripture bow the knee to ‘millions of years’ — it’s just the latest in a long line of examples of Christians failing to accept the authority of the Word of God.
My plea as I conclude: Let us not shrink from embracing biblical Creation, without compromise. (End of article)
