"The Stakes Have Never Been Higher"

Published on by D. G. Hart

Really?

According to ABC News, and its report on the resignation of Bruce Waltke from Reformed Theological Seminary, both sides agree that the stakes are indeed that high. Higher than the Scopes Trial? I was glad that they did not bring up William Jennings Bryan and his difficult testimony before Clarence Darrow’s badgering. But from what I could tell, the stakes this news reporter discovered are completely beside the point.

The way the press usually treats these things, it is a case of intolerance versus open mindedness, or science versus dogma, or a religious group’s retrenchment and inability to cope with modern ideas versus a community of faith that swims along quite elegantly in the waters of modern knowledge. And they can generally find religious scholars like Pete Enns and Randall Balmer who, siding more with the reporters than their fellow believers, will back up this set of contrasts (but who actually should know that there are more than two sides since they are experts on religion and the reporters aren’t).

This set of tensions could apply to the Waltke-RTS situation, but they don’t. The major contention has been the historicity of Adam, not whether he emerged from an evolutionary process. And beyond that, the questions have been largely theological, not scientific: what happens to the doctrine of original sin or federal headship if Adam was simply a mythical figure? And what happens to Paul’s two-Adam construction of covenant theology if one of those Adams is an ethereal character of unknown identity who may have hooked up with the mother of all humanity (that mother being confirmed by geneticists and anthropologists and thus supplying the evidence necessary for the unity of the human race).

So have the stakes ever been higher for federal theology? I’m not so sure. I’d need the help of historical theologians to make that call.

But to the idea that if Christians do not accept the idea of evolution they run the risk of becoming a cult, I wonder if Waltke or his supporter Enns, or ABC’s expert interviewee, Balmer, ever considered what belief in the resurrection of Christ makes the church look like before the scientifically knowledgeable world. Granted, the Genesis account of God’s creation of the parents of the human race may from a scientific perspective be hard to believe. I, frankly, am not sure that the naturalistic accounts of human origins are any easier to understand or believe. Be that as it may, do the Christians advocating evolution – and I am not going to give them too hard a time since one of my favorite theologians (sorry, Gary), Benjamin Warfield was one of them – really think the idea of Christ’s resurrection makes Christians soft, cuddly, and scientifically mainstream?

The stakes have been what they’ve always been. The Bible contains a lot of events and ideas that are hard to believe, whether you are scientific or not (think of all the premoderns who saw and heard Christ and did not believe). If not for the longevity of Christianity in Europe and North America, reporters might actually think that Christianity resembles Mormonism more than it does the Unitarian Church.

But for the record, when a three-time presidential nominee and one of the nation’s leading attorneys square off in courtroom proceedings that are broadcast nationally – which is what happened in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 – the stakes are pretty high, higher I’d say than the recent unpleasantness between Waltke and RTS. (And those stakes had more to do with majority rule and local government than with reason versus faith — but that’s another story.)

20 thoughts on “"The Stakes Have Never Been Higher"”

  2. Pingback: Historia Salutis » Blog Archive » More National News on Waltke

  6. The major contention has been the historicity of Adam, not whether he emerged from an evolutionary process.

    It would appear to be more complicated than that as Bruce Waltke’s statement explicitly re-affirmed his belief in a historical Adam – and the original video didn’t really address the claim in any case.

    Where did Dr. Waltke find employment?

    I think he found employment at Knox.

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  8. ‘Au contraire,Monsieur Hart
    I do beg to differ. I wrote a piece on this -‘In Defence of Warfield’ that appeared in the Aug/Sept 2009 issue of ‘The Banner of Truth’. BBW did incorporate certain aspects of evolutionary thought-particular what we know as microevolution. BUT, and this is the crux of the matter-BBW strongly affirmed all the historical details surrounding Adam,Eve, the serpent and the Fall.This, in and of itself, places him well beyond the the boundaries of what constitutes pure theistic evolution-especially the kind that Enns is affirming over at Biologos.

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  9. “I wonder if Waltke [et al.] ever considered what belief in the resurrection of Christ makes the church look like before the scientifically knowledgeable world.”

    Couldn’t the simple response be that the resurrection accounts, unlike the creation account, were written as historical records intended to be taken as such by their readers? Isn’t it really a matter of genre first, before it becomes a matter of questioning motivations?

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  10. Chris, but didn’t Joseph Smith intend his story of the lost tribes of Israel to be taken as history?

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  11. This sad, sad story reminded me of an early NTJ article called “Science and Its Discontents” Understanding what Dr. Waltke has positively affirmed, it makes me wonder if RTS would hire or dismiss the ilk of E J. Young or B. B. Warfield?

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  12. Mark
    You need to go back and read through the Waltke letter and the response of RTS. Waltke admitted to being unguarded and a bit careless in the video that Biologos gleefully put up. The responsible thing would have been for Biologos to first have Waltke review the video BEFORE making it public just so Bruce could have refined his position-which he did after the blow-up. Both Young and Warfield would have no problems affirming the special creation of Adam and the historicity of the Genesis account of the Fall. Not so Pete Enns and the folks at Biologos who posted a piece asking that since man evolved from apes at what point in time did God take one of these creatures and decide to bestow on it His image? In addition,both Young and Warfield would have recoiled with horror at the position of Enns that the Apostle Paul was not only hopelessly naive about the Genesis account of creation but was wrong in his understanding of Adam.

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  13. Waltke admitted to being unguarded and a bit careless in the video

    What are the circumstances under which people are generally unguarded? Is it not when they are with friends, family and / or those with whom they agree? The responsible thing would be for people not to say what they really think and then when it makes them look bad engage in cover up.

    What is really funny is that, what’s the big deal. Everyone knows that 6×24 YEC poses a far greater danger to the Reformed churches than any other “interpretation” of Genesis. Anyone who has a problem with Waltke is just trying to force their own Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty on to the Reformed churches.

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  16. Darryl, we might as well become Dada Theologians, with that kind of epistemological starting point. Despite the fact that I agree with what you’re getting at, I also like it when critical-realist guys like Wright write tomes on the resurrection. If all we have at the end of the day is plausiblity, then give me some evidence. Let Word and sacrament cover the rest.

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  19. Pingback: The Cult of the Resurrection « God's Two Kingdoms

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