How Did this Happen? Why Same-Sex Marriage Makes Sense to So Many

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

Why does same-sex marriage make sense to so many people? The momentum toward the full legalization of same-sex marriage seems to intensify with every passing month — or even faster. The moral divide in this nation is now seen most clearly in the distance between those for whom marriage is exclusively heterosexual and thus a settled issue and, on the other hand, those who honestly see the legalization of same-sex marriage as a moral mandate required by justice.

Given the venerable status of marriage and its universally established heterosexual character — at least until very recently — the burden of argument falls on the need to explain how such a movement for a moral revolution gained credibility, cultural mass, and momentum. How did this happen?

A culture does not consist only of ideas and ideologies, but no culture exists without them. Given the complexity of any culture, a comprehensive map of these ideas, moral intuitions, and philosophies is impossible to create. Nevertheless, some patterns are clear enough. We can trace the acceptance of same-sex marriage to at least three major ideas that have been shaping the modern mind for some time — and are held to some extent by both social liberals and conservatives.

A Progressivist Understanding of History

One of the ideological engines of our social revolution is the idea that history reveals a progressive liberation of peoples who have suffered oppression. In this view of history, one prejudice after another has fallen as we have come to terms with the demands of justice. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

In other words, history reveals an inevitable, though tortuously long, arc toward justice and fairness. Over the course of history, innumerable superstitions and prejudices have been discarded. Slavery, once considered a social and economic necessity on both sides of the Atlantic, was overcome in Western democracies. Women demanded and were granted the right to vote. The world of Jim Crow gave way to the world of racial integration and civil rights. The mentally disabled are no longer put away in asylums. The Irish and Italians, once oppressed as the unwashed and unwanted immigrants of the Gilded Age, have risen to prominence in every arena of American life. America has elected its first African-American President. History marches on.

For obvious reasons, the movement to normalize homosexuality attached itself to this idea of historical progress. This was a natural and inevitable development, and those who formed the strategy for this movement used the most powerful tools at their disposal. The progressivist vision of history was there for the taking, and the gay rights movement took it up with enthusiasm.

Americans are naturally drawn to this understanding of history. It plays to our belief that our generation is in some way morally superior to the generations who preceded us. Liberals feast on this understanding of history and make it their main argument in any number of debates. But conservatives are shaped by this narrative, as well. Conservatives accept the undeniable fact that history, both long and short, tells a story that we should celebrate at countless turns.

But the problem with the progressivist understanding of history is that it cannot stand alone. It cannot be the only narrative. There has to become means of identifying what is truly a manifestation of oppression and what is a structure necessary for human flourishing. If the only story we have is the narrative of liberation from oppression, then, as Karl Marx understood, all that remains is an unstoppable revolution that dissolves all bonds of relationship, kinship, tradition, and moral order. Should children be liberated from the authority of their parents? Should all prisoners be liberated from their cells? Should human beings be liberated from the obligations of family and kinship?

The progressivist understanding of history must be checked by a recognition that liberation from oppression is not the only true and compelling narrative. The affirmation and preservation of moral obligations and commitments must be the companion narrative. But, in order to understand why so many among us see something as morally revolutionary and socially subversive as same-sex marriage to be something to demand and champion, consider the fact that many of our friends and neighbors see same-sex marriage as only the next logical step in overcoming prejudice and discrimination. It is the only story they know, and it is powerful.

A Radical Individualism

Paired with the progressivist understanding of history is a vision of individualism that is virtually unprecedented in human experience. An affirmation of the importance of the individual is written into the fabric of modern thought. Our understanding of human rights, of individual liberty, and of personal responsibility are central to the American self-consciousness. Add to this the fact that the rise of the therapeutic worldview has recast human experience as a continuous project of individual self-discovery and self-definition.

But, if individualism was central to the American experience from the beginning, the current form of this idea is far more radical than previous generations could imagine. The current form of individualism includes the claim that we can define ourselves even in terms of gender and sex. This individualism is titanic in its reach, producing what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton once described as the “Protean Man.” We demand the total right to define ourselves.

Once again, we must recognize that the opponents of same-sex marriage have also been drinking heavily at the springs that feed this powerful idea. Many conservatives have bought into their own form of expressive individualism, taking refuge in the structures of social order only when convenient, bending moral codes to our own individualistic demands, forfeiting moral obligations when they conflict with our favorite project — ourselves.

The control on the destructive force of expressive individualism is the reality of moral obligation and the goodness of true self-knowledge. As Christians know — and must always remember — we are known before we ever emerge to know. Our Creator knew us before we even came to be, and he established our identity before we came to know ourselves. True happiness can come only by embracing with gratitude the identity we are given by the Creator. This idea — now reaching even to sex and gender — is anathema to the modern mind.

The Claim of Moral Autonomy

Throughout most of human history, moral principles were considered to be objectively true and inviolate. The universe was understood to be ruled by a moral law established by a divine Lawgiver and Judge. That understanding has given way to the belief that most, if not all, moral principles are the products of social construction — we make them up as we go along.

While most criticisms of moral relativism are directed at individual conduct, on the larger scale, the entire society is increasingly convinced that moral principles must give way to new understandings, findings, and insights. When this idea is added to the progressivist understanding of history and the radical form of modern individualism, we have a recipe for moral revolution.

And, as with the other ideological factors we have considered, this one is also affirmed, to some degree, by both liberals and conservatives. There can be no doubt that some understandings of moral principle were indeed shaped by prejudice and ignorance, leading to great human suffering. Laws against interracial marriage were prime examples of this prejudice, and there are many others. Fear of minorities, including homosexuals, has led to scapegoating and hatred, cloaked in the language of moral rectitude. These things must give way to moral progress and be denounced with moral fervor.

But, once again, not all moral principles are examples of oppression. To the contrary, human life is only possible within the context of enduring moral laws and principles that liberate all human beings to their true humanity. This is where those who support same-sex marriage and those who oppose it face each other across a huge gulf of understanding. One side sees a moral mandate to liberate marriage from its heterosexual limitation. The other side sees natural marriage as a liberating, God-given institution for human flourishing. There is precious little shared ground in this debate.

Same-sex marriage is not an idea that emerged from a vacuum. The project of normalizing homosexuality has deep roots and ideological momentum. The elites, the entertainment culture, the news media, and the educational establishment celebrate all three of these ideas as central to the modern experience and as ideological propulsion into a better future.

So, when we wonder how it came to be that so many among us now favor same-sex marriage, we must remember that, to some extent or another, virtually all of us have embraced the ideas that make such a moral revolution thinkable. And ideas, as Richard Weaver famously reminded us, have consequences.

Orchestral Evangelists

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

In a class on Matthew’s gospel, my students are learning how to hear the voice of Matthew the evangelist, to understand how he structures his arguments, how he tells his stories, and what his particular theological concerns are as he reports the words and actions of Jesus. After the initial rush of excitement about how much there is to learn from this gospel, we come to an awkward point.

Before studying each gospel in depth, you can hardly tell the four evangelists apart, and you get used to just having the story of Jesus times four. But as soon as you start to develop an ear for what is distinctively Matthean, Markan, Lukan, and Johannine –cool word alert!– you may suddenly get the feeling that your new skills are taking Jesus away from you, and replacing him with: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. “I used to have Jesus! Who took him away? Now all I have is Jesus according to Matthew, Jesus according to Mark, etc.”

There is no need to panic. First of all, you never had “just plain Jesus.” You have always had Jesus as the Holy Spirit sovereignly chose to make him known to you, in these four gospels. So you haven’t lost anything, except imprecise Bible reading. And that’s a good thing to lose.

Secondly, Jesus according to the four gospels is not four Jesi, as if Jesus could be pluralized, and Jesi were even a word. The New Testament shows the one Lord Jesus Christ, from four overlapping and interconnected angles. When we saturate ourselves in the study of one gospel, we increase our understanding of the one Lord Jesus Christ, from one of the inspired angles of approach.

Third, this growth from an undifferentiated, monophonic uniformity, to a complex, orchestral unity, is what happens whenever you take on a new mental skill, habit, or ability.

C.S. Lewis, master of illustrations, explains the process perfectly in the essay “Religion: Reality or Substitute?” He is making a different point, but his words are apt here:

When I was a boy, gramophone records were not nearly so good as they are now. In the old recording of an orchestral piece you could hardly hear the separate instrument at all, but only a single undifferentiated sound. That was the sort of music I grew up on.

And when, at a somewhat later age, I began to hear real orchestras, I was actually disappointed with them, just because you didn’t get that single sound.

What one got in a concert room seemed to me to lack the unity I had grown to expect, to be not an orchestra but merely a number of individual musicians on the same platform. In fact, I felt it “wasn’t the Real Thing.”

You may feel a pang of nostalgia and a desire to go back to just plain Jesus. But you’ve got to catch yourself here: What’s real is the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus of the four evangelists. What’s vague and imprecise is any other way of thinking about Jesus, with various stories from various gospels all mingled together and probably mixed with film images, past sermons, and other post-biblical sources.

About listening to orchestral music, Lewis admits that “owing to my musical miseducation the reality appeared to be a substitute and the substitute a reality.” But he knew that the actual orchestra was better than the monophonic recording in which no distinct instruments could be heard. So he set about adjusting his ear, refining his sensibilities, and learning to love the reality more than the substitute. When we devoutly study one particular gospel, and learn to think like Matthew, we are doing the same thing.

The Marketplace of Ideas — Why Bookstores Matter

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

“Book stores are going away.” That is the conclusion reached by Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of Idea Logical Co., a consulting firm based in New York. Shatzkin offered his ominous prediction to The Wall Street Journal as that paper was reporting on the expected bankruptcy filing by Borders, one of the nation’s largest book store chains.

That Chapter 11 filing came Wednesday, along with the announcement that the chain is closing about 200 stores — approximately 30 percent of Borders locations.

The decline and fall of Borders will be studied for years to come. The chain’s management bears considerable responsibility for the crisis. They opened far too many locations, allowed many of their most important stores to grow old and unattractive, and reduced their inventory of titles. Beyond all that, the firm managed to miss out on the digital revolution, a branded e-reader, and the explosion of online book sales.

But even the best-managed book stores are in trouble. The emergence of Amazon as a vast, online book-selling machine with discounted prices and the sudden popularity of electronic readers and digital books have already changed the book business from top to bottom — and the revolution has hardly started.

Shatzkin offers a blunt assessment of the future: “I think that there will be a 50% reduction in bricks-and-mortar shelf space for books within five years, and 90% within 10 years.”

Seth Godin, a business writer, told the Journal that the travail of Borders is, as the paper reports, “the penultimate step in the demise of bookstores in general.”

The general wisdom seems to be that the bookstore will go the way of the record store and the video rental outlet. The bookstore may have been an important cultural asset in years past, many argue, but it has little place in a world of e-readers, online sales, and mega retailers like WalMart that deep-discount bestsellers.

Some go further and suggest that the demise of the bookstore is a signal of the demise of the book itself, at least as a printed product with pages between covers. That dystopian prophecy is almost surely overblown, but the book’s survival in printed form does depend, to a considerable extent, upon the survival of bookstores.

The reason for this is simple. Printed books are physical objects that cry out to be handled even before they are read. The physicality of the book is important to the experience of the book itself. The arrangement and order of the words is supreme, but the appearance of the book and the feel of the book in the hand are also part of the reading experience.

Furthermore, the experience of handling the book is revealing in other important ways. The cover and front matter of books tell us something. We are informed by the “blurbs” on the cover and by the reputation of the publisher. We can open the book and thumb through its pages, checking the table of contents, the index, the preface, and the dedication.

Mark Coker, chief executive of Smashwords Inc., an e-book company, told the Journal that when the physical space on the shelves of bookstores disappears, “it’s gone forever.” He added: “If you remove books from our towns and villages and malls, there will be less opportunity for the serendipitous discovery of books. And that will make it tougher to sell books.”

The loss of the bookstore will mean more than lost opportunities to sell books, however. For the last two centuries and more, bookstores and bookstalls have been centers for the dissemination of culture and ideas. The merging of the bookstore and the coffee shop brought two complementary cultural spaces together. Books are about ideas, and bookstores offer a rare context for meeting other people interested in ideas.

Being in a bookstore helps me to think. I find that my mind makes connections between authors and books and ideas as I walk along the shelves and look at the tables. When I get a case of writer’s block, I head for a bookstore. The experience of walking among the books is curative.

I learn a great deal just by being in a good bookstore — and often even in a bad one. I have learned much by visiting a Maoist bookstore in Berkeley, Jewish bookstores in Brooklyn, the old Communist Party bookstore in central London, Muslim bookstores in Berlin, and the eccentric book shops of the Left Bank in Paris. I know cities by their bookstores. To visit Oxford, England without a trip to Blackwell’s is unforgivable — as is a visit to Oxford, Mississippi without a visit to Square Books.

You can learn a very great deal about a college or university by its bookstore and by the bookstores in its neighborhood. A walk through the Gothic Bookstore at Duke or the Seminary Co-op Bookstore at the University of Chicago is a walk through a feast of learning. The excellent bookstore on our campus is a vital part of our academic program and the learning experience. If the college you visit has a bookstore filled with t-shirts rather than books, find another college.

The rise and spread of the Christian bookstore has helped to fuel the explosion in Christian publishing. But, as with secular booksellers, much of the space in Christian bookstores these days seems given over to kitsch rather than to books. For many Christians, the local Christian bookstore is a lifeline to learning and growth.

Many of my most fruitful and important evangelistic conversations have occurred in bookstores. I frequent a few particular bookstores just because I know that a promising conversation about the Gospel might well happen.

I buy a frightful number of books from Amazon and other online booksellers. The ease of ordering and the convenience of home delivery are extraordinarily helpful. I have enjoyed the rise of the mega chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble. While these chains have faced criticism for pushing smaller stores out of business, they brought huge inventories that drew customers for good reason. I love the small independent bookstores, and I do considerable business with independent stores in Louisville precisely because I consider them to be important community assets.

My Kindle and iPad are filled with digital books, and the e-book will be one of the dominant book forms and formats of the future. When I need an e-book, a push of a button makes it happen. Who wouldn’t welcome that development? But the e-book is not the same as a physical book, and both the digital and the printed book have their own charms.

Mike Shatzkin thinks the handwriting is already on the wall — “Book stores are going away.” He may be right, but I hold out hope that he is not. If he is, it is far more than bookstores that we will lose.

Liberty Not Just Freedom For Egypt

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

The West is selling the illusion of freedom to the world, but not the demands of liberty.

We take for granted our liberty in the United States. Not everyone has to be liberated in order for us to parasitically ride their moderation, but no culture can stand too many parasites and remain strong. If too many abuse freedom, then we will lose all liberty.

Humans are truly free to the extent that we are liberated from the desire to use freedom to do evil deeds. Freedom gives the right to choose, but the liberated choose wisely. Founders like Adams and Washington understood that the highest good is not personal peace, bread, and stuff.

The Founders of America knew there is no “right” to do evil deeds. Wrong choices undercut liberty by producing bad men. Bad men will demand the freedom to do evil and insist society call their evil “good.” This will undercut the ability of society to police itself and soon the masses will look to government to do the job moral degenerates cannot do.

This always fails, because if men will cheat in their private life without guilt or repentance, then it will not be long before those same men will cheat in their public lives. You cannot bribe a good man and a good man makes a good judge. You cannot get a good judge out of citizens enthralled to money and power. American leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt constantly warned that education or “success” without morality was dangerous to society.

Any freedom without individual moral character or agreed on societal moral standards will eventually degenerate into tyranny and worse evils than existed in Egypt before the fall of Mubarak.

Leaders like Frederick Douglass knew that the hedonist couldn’t be freed, just as the good man can never really be enslaved. There was a reason slave owners tried to enslave their “property” to drink and immorality. Strong families and moderation in private behavior were discouraged.

Evil men believe that material goods will make them happy or that they can ignore the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God without penalty. Society, consisting of family and social organizations, will rot when men and women become free without the corresponding sense of moral duty. A decayed social infrastructure needs to be replaced and the state will fill the need, but a large state will soon crush liberty. Such “free” men and women will sell their freedom to the first tyrant that promises them security.

Know truth and a man will have liberty, but reject truth and the ignorant will be slaves. No man or woman can be free who has not learned to restrain his or her own desires, because those desires will demand time and mental energy that should be used on greater things.

One of those truths, self-evident to thinking people, is that the Creator gave each human being the right to life and liberty. John Locke, philosopher and Christian apologist, shows Egypt the way a traditional religious society can produce growing liberty. Locke provided the intellectual underpinnings for the American Revolution by bringing together an agreed on standard of private (in his case Christian) morality with public liberty. He relied on accepted Christian moral standards to create moral men who would restrain themselves in dangerous situations like a revolution.

Locke was willing to trust the Christian citizen with unprecedented amounts of political power. The best hope for Egypt is that Islamic, Coptic, and Jewish Egyptians can revive marriage between private piety and public liberty that Locke envisioned. They must do so in a way natural to Egyptian language and custom, and the great monotheist faiths have the resources to do this job.

Secularism does not. Secularism will inevitably lead to hedonism in most and that hedonism will undercut the morality needed to maintain culture. Of course it is not sufficient to acknowledge a Creator to promote liberty, but it is necessary, because it is an important moral fact. If Egyptians can adapt the private morality of their religion to a public respect for liberty, then there is hope for Egypt.

The Founding Generation of Americans symbolized their love of liberty in a bell. This “liberty bell” contained an important Bible verse: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” In a nation where God’s moral law was written on the minds of most citizens through private piety such a proclamation makes sense. In a nation that seeks only freedom for personal short-term pleasure, the liberty bell is the toll of doom as men use freedom to do evil.

We shall see which it is in Egypt.

There’s not a ‘Trinity verse’ — and that’s a good thing

By Fred Sanders
Biola Magazine

The Trinity is a biblical doctrine, but let’s admit it: There’s something annoying about how hard it is to put your finger on a verse that states the whole doctrine.

The Bible presents the elements of the doctrine in numerous passages, of course: that there is only one God; that the Father is God; that the Son is God; and that the Spirit is God. We can also tell easily enough that the Father, Son and Spirit are really distinct from one another, and are not just three names for one person. If you hold all those clear teachings of Scripture in your mind at one time and think through them together, the doctrine of the Trinity is inevitable. Trinitarianism is a biblical doctrine and all the ingredients are given to us there: Just add thought and you have the classic doctrine.

Like most evangelicals, though, I would prefer to have a doctrine be stated clearly and concisely in one place. I like my doctrines verse-sized. I sometimes wish there were one verse that said, “God is one being in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” The doctrine of the Trinity, though, is simply not verse-sized. Sometimes that feels like a disadvantage, but in fact it’s an advantage. The doctrine of the Trinity is a massive, comprehensive, full-Bible doctrine that serves to expand our minds as readers of Scripture. In Scripture, God is leading his people to understand who he is as Father, Son and Spirit.

For example, set aside for a moment the desire to fit the doctrine into one verse. Look instead at how it shows up in a slightly larger (three verses) passage, Galatians 4:4-6: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son … to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” Paul is describing God’s greatest acts in the history of salvation, and those acts are specifically Trinitarian: The Father sends the Son and the Spirit to save.

Or think even bigger: In a crucial passage of Romans, Paul summarizes his message in five verses, and there is a necessarily Trinitarian cadence to his summary: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. … We rejoice … because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:1–5).

Or try to take in 12 verses at once: Ephesians 1:3-14 is one gigantic sentence (in Greek) that surveys all of God’s plans and intentions from eternity past, through our present salvation, and on to final redemption. Three times it points us to the kind intention of God’s will, and three times it points us to the praise of his glory. The fundamental movement of the passage, though, is from the Father’s choosing and predestining us in love, through the beloved Son’s death for our forgiveness, to the Holy Spirit’s work sealing us for redemption.

Once you learn to see the Trinity shaping these larger stretches of Scripture, you’re ready to notice how entire books of the Bible are structured by the same Trinitarian logic. In Galatians, for example, Paul proves his gospel of faith against salvation by works in a three-part argument: The Galatians received the Spirit by faith, God promised Abraham that he would justify the Gentiles by faith, and Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. The great arc of Romans runs from the Father’s judgment through the Son’s propitiation to the Spirit’s deliverance.

If you want to catch a glimpse of the Trinity as the big story behind the Bible, the best thing to do is to read the Gospel of John fast, in one sitting. Your dominant impression during the first half will be that the Father and the Son love each other, and in the second half the Holy Spirit will burst into your attention as the fulfillment of the revelation.

There are a handful of verses where the three persons are named in one place, such as Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14. These classic passages have the advantage of being comfortably verse-sized. But when we move on from the partial glimpses of the Trinity we can get from single verses, we are led on to larger stretches of argument, wider vistas of insight, and a more inclusive expanse of God’s self-revelation through Scripture. And that prepares our minds for the biggest Christian thought of all: The whole Bible is one complete book that reveals the Trinity. That fact is what the ancient church fathers meant when they summarized the Christian faith in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God the Father … and in his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ … and in the Holy Spirit.”

The Trinity is a biblical doctrine, therefore, in a very special sense: not in any one verse, but as the key to the entire book.

More Religion, Better Religion

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Blaming Egyptian political problems on Islam is akin to blaming Confucius for the barbarism of the Chinese communist governments. The thugs and plutocrats looting the economy of Egypt are not notably religious.

If they are the product of anything, these leaders are those who have despoiled pieces of European, Islamic, and Egyptian culture and pieced them together in a way that will allow for their own enrichment. They cling to power with the support of the United States because we fear, with some justification, that the alternatives are worse.

Their time has past and the time for the United States to tolerate their rule is over. If it was ever justifiable, the justification has ended. Support for such a regime taints our message about human rights and liberty. It associates Western values with a tyrant, and tyranny—however benevolent—is incompatible with our best interests.

Islam conquered Christian Egypt and appropriated much of that glorious heritage. The invaders became part of Egypt and successfully blended Arab ideas with Egyptian ones. Islam is flexible and can adapt to many new ideas if given the chance.

However, poor Muslims driven to extremes by poverty and hopelessness will have little appreciation for subtle ideas. They will end up embracing bastard forms of Islam more indebted to Marx or Hitler than to the Quran. When the middle classes face gnawing hunger, folk become immoderate and revolutionary.

Revolutions generally empower tyrants and despots who are just as capable of using religion as secularism to justify their evils. Iran misuses Islam, North Korea abuses secularism, and African despots abuse Christianity.

Tyrants all over the Middle East have spent billions to promote ideologies that would prop up their regimes. The House of Saud has long looted and pillaged Arabia while posturing as defenders of Islam. They placate the masses by funding the worst varieties of the Faith, but then jet to the West to indulge in the vices they forbid their own people.

Starved of true education, fed on lies, the people of the Middle East react with disbelief in any “official” idea. They become prey for charlatans and conspiracy theorists. They turn their resentment into hatred of Jews, Christians, or any other minority group and such programs are often secretly encouraged by the corrupt governments as a way to let off steam.

All of this is as far from the philosophy that flourished in Islamic Alexandria, as the men who murdered a gay rights activist in Uganda are from the teachings of Jesus Christ.

The cure for Egypt is true religion: justice for the poor, love of neighbor, and submission to the will of God. This cure has been too long delayed and now any move is dangerous, but the greater danger is further delay.

Egypt must find a government that gives people liberty, hope, and allows for a decent standard of living. Egypt must protect the rights of all citizens: including the Christians who are an integral part of her historic identity. Egypt must find leaders who are Muslim not-in-name-only, but full of compassion for the poor and who understand the need to appropriate the best of modernity.

The terrifying fact is that these leaders must be found in the midst of grinding poverty and chaos.

As a Christian, I do not think Islam is true, but I know it contains many practical truths with political and social implications. The vast majority of Egyptians embrace Islam and so there is hope that the truth in Islam can help Egypt. Islam encourages compassion and charity to the poor. It preaches justice and excoriates self-serving thieves in power. At present, it would be idiotic to alienate the Islamic majority of Egypt. Instead, American Christians should find areas of agreement with that majority and encourage their implementation.

Egypt was Christian before she was Muslim. She retains a significant Christian population. American Christians, including political candidates like Mike Huckabee, should not endanger those brothers and sisters in Christ, through rash statements.

Creation vs. Evolution — The New Shape of the Debate

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

The debate over Darwinism rages on, with almost every week bringing a new salvo in the Great Controversy. The reason for this is simple and straightforward — naturalistic evolution is the great intellectual rival to Christianity in the Western world. It is the creation myth of the secular elites and their intellectual weapon of choice in public debate.

In some sense, this has been true ever since Darwin. When Charles Darwin developed and published his theory of natural selection, the most obvious question to appear to informed minds was this: Can the theory of evolution be reconciled with the Christian faith?

The emergence of evolution as a theory of origins and the existence of life forms presented a clear challenge to the account of creation offered within the Bible, especially in the opening chapters of Genesis. At face value, these accounts seem irreconcilable.

There were a good many intrepid and honest souls in the nineteenth century who understood the reality that, if evolution is true, the Bible must be radically reinterpreted. Others went further and, like the New Atheists in our time, seized upon evolution as an intellectual weapon to be used against Christianity.

There were others who attempted to mediate between evolution and Christianity. In the most common form of the argument, they asserted that the Bible tells the story of the who and the why of creation, but not the how. The how was left to empirical science and its theory of evolution.

In more recent years, this argument has been made from the evolutionary side of the argument by the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University, who proposed that the worlds of science and religious faith were completely separate, constituting “non-overlapping magisteria.” In effect, he argued that religion and science cannot conflict, since they do not address the same questions.

The problem with this argument is obvious: Darwinism and Genesis do clearly overlap. The Bible does not merely speak of the who and the why. It also makes explicit claims concerning the how. Likewise, even a cursory review of the evolutionary literature indicates that evolutionary scientists routinely make assertions concerning the who and why questions. It is just not intellectually honest to argue that evolutionary theory deals only with the mechanisms of the existence of the Cosmos and that the Bible deals only with the meaning of creation.

Another approach had been taken by some Christian theologians in the nineteenth century. In their own way, even some among the honored and orthodox “Princeton Theologians” attempted to argue that there was no necessary conflict between Genesis and Darwin. They were so convinced of the power of empirical science and of the authority of Scripture that they were absolutely sure that the progress of science would eventually prove the truthfulness of the Bible.

What these theologians did not recognize was the naturalistic bent of modern science. The framers of modern evolutionary theory did not move toward an acknowledgment of divine causality. To the contrary, Darwin’s central defenders today oppose even the idea known as “Intelligent Design.” Their worldview is that of a sterile box filled only with naturalistic precepts.

From the beginning of this conflict, there have been those who have attempted some form of accommodation with Darwinism. In its most common form, this amounts to some version of “theistic evolution” — the idea that the evolutionary process is guided by God in order to accomplish his divine purposes.

Given the stakes in this public controversy, the attractiveness of theistic evolution becomes clear. The creation of a middle ground between Christianity and evolution would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict. Yet, in the process of attempting to negotiate this new middle ground, it is the Bible and the entirety of Christian theology that gives way, not evolutionary theory. Theistic evolution is a biblical and theological disaster.

The mainstream doctrine of evolution held by the scientific establishment and tenaciously defended by its advocates does not even allow for the possibility of a divinely implanted meaning in the Cosmos, much less for any divine guidance of the evolutionary process. There has been an unrelenting push of evolutionary theory deeper and deeper into purely naturalistic assumptions and an ever-increasing hostility to Christian truth claims.

On the other side of the equation, the injury to Christian convictions is incalculable. At the very least, the acceptance of evolutionary theory requires that the first two chapters of Genesis be read merely as a literary rendering that offers no historical data. But, of course, the injury does not end there.

If evolution is true, then the entire narrative of the Bible has to be revised and reinterpreted. The evolutionary account is not only incompatible with any historical affirmation of Genesis, but it is also incompatible with the claim that all humanity is descended from Adam and the claim that in Adam all humanity fell into sin and guilt. The Bible’s account of the Fall and its consequences is utterly incompatible with evolutionary theory. The third chapter of Genesis is as problematic for evolutionary theory as the first two.

The naturalistic evolutionists are now pressing their case in moral as well as intellectual terms. Increasingly, they are arguing that a refusal to accept evolution represents a thought crime of sorts. They are using all the tools and arguments at their disposal to discredit any denial of evolution and to marginalize voices who question the dogma of Darwinism. They are working hard to establish unquestioned belief in evolution as the only right-minded and publicly acceptable position. They have already succeeded among the intellectual elites. Their main project now is the projection of this victory throughout popular culture.

Among the theistic evolutionists, the issues are becoming clearer almost every day that passes. Proponents of theistic evolution are now engaged in the public rejection of biblical inerrancy — with some calling the affirmation of the Bible’s inerrancy as an intellectual disaster and “intellectual cul-de-sac.” Others now openly assert that we must forfeit belief in an historical Adam, an historical Fall, and a universal Flood.

Thus, the vise of evolutionary theory is now revealing the fault lines of the current debate. There can be no question but that the authority of the Bible and the truthfulness of the Gospel are now clearly at stake. The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible’s account of creation. If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms.

This is the new shape of the debate over evolution. We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and gospel integrity are at stake. Are you ready for this debate?