BioLogos as a false teaching organization that platforms teachers who do not believe the Bible or the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Really? This is their nastiest attack ever!
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BioLogos must be having an impact. I am hopeful that this article will awaken the curiosity of some of its readers enough to motivate them to really look into the issues rather than simply parroting back what AIG tells them.
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Quote miners extraordinaire over there. And such good editorial practice not to link quotes to a source so you can read them in context. Do they not understand how the internet works either? Lots of places publish articles by people, and that doesn’t mean they are “teaching” everything the author says or will ever go on to say in the next fifteen years.
What AIG quoted:
“If Jesus as a finite human being erred from time to time, there is no reason at all to suppose that Moses, Paul, John wrote Scripture without error.”
That is from Kenton Sparks’ book, God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship, (Baker Academic, 2008). Excerpts from that book did run as a blog series on the BioLogos website in 2010, but that series is no longer on the website. (ETA: I found that quote in a white paper that was at one time posted on BioLogos, back when the website had little more than a collection of white papers on various topics where scholars presented a range of ideas. You can find the full context of the quote here: After Inerrancy)
Though theologians seldom point this out, the fact that Jesus operated mainly within the horizon of his finite human horizon has other implications. If we assume for the sake of discussion that he was a carpenter like his father, did he ever miss the nail with his hammer? Hit his thumb? Did he think that he left his saw on the bench when, because he was distracted, he actually leaned it against the wall? Did Jesus ever look across a crowded town square and think that he saw his brother James only to discover that it was someone else? And did he estimate that the crowd was about 300 when it was really 200? To confess that Jesus was fully human is to admit that the answer to these questions must be yes. And if yes, then this observation surely has implications for how we think about Scripture. If Jesus as a finite human being erred from time to time, there is no reason at all to suppose that Moses, Paul, John wrote Scripture without error. Rather, we are wise to assume that the biblical authors expressed themselves as human beings writing from the perspectives of their own finite, broken horizons.
What AIG quoted:
[E]ven though the Bible assumes a certain way of looking at the cosmos, from a scientific point of view the Bible is wrong.
I searched for this in the 34 Peter Enns resources that BioLogos has up and couldn’t find that quote. Yes, we know Peter Enn’s says provocative things that annoy Ken Ham. (ETA: I found the quote in a 2010 creation.com article. Nice job doing your own current research, guys. From a half-hearted attempt at a footnote there, I found the old white paper saved on my computer. I could not find it on the internet. It was another one of the white papers from the original BioLogos website over a decade ago.)
Context of the quote (note that in context Pete Enns is just summarizing what most Christians believe about heliocentricity, and italics matter):
The science vs. religion question, although relevant, does not address the true heart of the
hermeneutical and doctrinal problem and misses why significant tensions continue to exist. Other scientific issues, like the heliocentric solar system or age of the universe, are things that most Christians have more or less reconciled to the Bible’s geocentric and “young earth” view. Most Christians understand that, even though the Bible assumes a certain way of looking at the cosmos, from a scientific point of view the Bible is wrong. And that is perfectly fine. The conclusion most draw is not that the Bible falls short of being a sacred text, but that it speaks in an ancient idiom, and so cannot be expected to speak to modern scientific matters. Problem solved. When it comes to evolution, however, this “science and faith” rapprochement is not adequate. Evolution strikes at issues that are of central importance to anyone whose Christian faith involves a serious accounting of the Bible. Evolution poses that humanity is not the product of a special creative act by God, but of a process that began with the simplest of one-cell life forms and over billions of years developed into the vast array of life on this planet—plants, reptiles, fish, mammals, etc., and, of course, humanity. These humans also happen to share a common ancestry with primates. One can certainly posit God’s role in initiating and providentially guiding such a process, but that is not the point here. The tension evolution creates with the Bible is far more significant than heliocentricity or the age of the universe, and the reasons are well known to anyone who has thought about this issue. To cut to the chase, if evolution is correct, one can no longer accept in any true sense of the word “historical” the instantaneous and special creation of humanity out of dust as described in Genesis.
What AIG quoted (there was a lot left out with those three little dots):
First, the incarnation is not primarily about the cross. God does not send Jesus to die. God does not require Jesus’ death in order to forgive humanity’s sin. I argue that God did not will the cross . . . Christ’s death was not part of God’s divine plan.
What the author said in context:
First, the incarnation is not primarily about the cross. God does not send Jesus to die. God does not require Jesus’ death in order to forgive humanity’s sin. As a result, God is not motivated by retribution or righteous anger. Instead, the incarnation is motivated by love. God wanted humanity to know him in a new and robust way. God wanted to be present to humanity in the midst of its sin and isolation. God desires right relationship. As a demonstration of God’s immense love and compassion, God takes on flesh and bone. He becomes a vulnerable child relying on humans for his every need. He learns what it is to hunger and thirst. He experiences torture, humiliation, and isolation on the cross. In the end, Jesus experiences death. And in so doing, Christ connects to humanity in a new and powerful way. His compassion both shows us the way of our salvation (revelation) and inspires us to follow after him.
I argue that God did not will the cross. An angry crowd, a prideful group of the religious elite, and a cowardly Roman prefect, put a perfectly innocent man to death. They willed the cross. And I believe this act is an example of sin. But God is holy, loving, and just. Thus, God cannot will or condone sin. Instead, I argue that the incarnation is about life, revelation, and inspiration—not death. I believe that God knew Jesus would be killed. That’s what happens when the kingdom of God collides with the kingdom of this world. But Christ’s death was not part of God’s divine plan. It was the tragic result of human sin. But as horrific as the cross was, God’s love extends beyond and redeems it. In spite of the anger, hatred, and violence displayed during the crucifixion, Jesus still calls out for God to forgive the crowd. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) God’s love is greater than human sin. And the redemption promised in the coming Kingdom of God is revealed most clearly in the resurrection that occurs three days later. What sin and violence destroyed, God’s love redeemed. This is a vision of the eschaton; it is a vision of our atonement. God promises to absorb violence and death and replace it with reconciliation, forgiveness, and love. This revelation, this vision, is the reason for the incarnation. It is the power behind the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And it is the method and the means of our atonement and ultimate salvation.
Substitutionary Atonement and Evolution - BioLogos
AIG says:
“In contrast, an extensive search on the BioLogos website reveals they do not emphasize or explain the gospel in any detail.”
Something tells me maybe not so extensive.
I have personally written an article for BioLogos explaining the gospel, Calvin.
Then we come to the centerpiece of the gospel: Jesus Christ suffering the ultimate humiliation of crucifixion in order to defeat sin and death and bring salvation to those who don’t deserve it and can never earn it. As Paul and the other apostles traveled around preaching the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection, none of it made any sense by the standards of “human wisdom.” Kings and gods do not give up power and become nothing (Philippians 2:1-11). The religious status afforded by birthright, disciplined study, and conscientious living should count for something, not be looked down on as “rubbish” (Philippians 3:2-11). The right to approach the throne of heaven with confidence as one of God’s own children could not possibly be a free gift of grace requiring only faith (Hebrews 4:14-16, Ephesians 2:4-9, Galatians 3:26-29). But over and over in the New Testament, we see Paul confronting “human wisdom” about how the world should work with the amazing message of the cross; it thwarts one expectation after another with the demonstration of its power.
Gentiles receive the Holy Spirit, slaves and their masters become brothers, the dividing wall of hostility between Hebrews and Greeks is torn down, and women are valued co-laborers in spreading the good news. Human wisdom about the way the world is supposed to work is completely overturned.
AIG: " Many people seeing the title of my article will likely consider it overly provocative and extremely uncharitable according to Christian standards."
Yes, yes we do think this.
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One additional disingenuous quote was the isolated statements pulled from the Biologos “What We Believe” section, hoping their readers would not take the time to read the section in context, which affirms the orthodox reading of the gospel without ambiguity. To do so is deceptive.
Perhaps we should all pay attention to Paul’s words to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:(NIV)
“3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.”
Of course, applying those words is not so easy, but the admonition to strive for the goal of love is something we can all hopefully agree upon.
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I just pray and hope a bunch of them that follow AIG will for the first time hear about BioLogos and join for whatever reason and have seeds planted inside of them.
I’m also not surprised that they take things out of context. AIG and the other places are honestly some of the most dishonest organizations I’ve encountered.
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That’s certainly true. They have no shame.
To be honest I don’t think this is really negative. The majority of hardcore yecist that read AIG probably won’t change their minds and the ones that do are probably younger and have not yet really came across evolutionary creationist. I’ve talked to hundreds of YECist in the last decade and none of them have ever mentioned BioLogos or even Language of God. Granted I only knew of y’all until 2-3 years ago and inwas interested in evolutionary creationism, or rather Christians who accepted evolution, for about 5 years before that. Before then I never really worried about it.
So for many of them I think it may be a introduction for them to becoming aware BioLogos exists and they will end up sneaking around and even joining the forums. Ultimately they are on the failing side. God is Truth and evolution is a truthful interpretation of the data and those who seek the truth, and those who seek knowledge will eventually end up here. More and more every year end up here. Tim Mackie’s work on how to read genesis has lead to many becoming more open to EC views and he was not even pushing anything scientific. Even if BL ceased today, Christians would continue to end up accepting science and seeing what’s actually said here. There is a decent chance in the long run it will be beneficial for those seeking to actually learn the science.
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What Answers in Genesis is denouncing as “heresy” and “secular humanistic religion” — deep geological time and biological evolution — are facts. Moreover they are some of the most well-established and rock-solid facts in the whole of science, on a par with gravity, electromagnetism, the Periodic Table, and trigonometry. As I understand it, the BioLogos message is simply that as Christians we need to be honest about this. Inventing our own alternative realities just because we don’t like the facts doesn’t uphold the Bible; on the contrary, it undermines it and brings it into disrepute.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is a word for organisations that denounce hard facts as “heresy” or “secular humanistic religion” or “false teaching.” The word in question is “cult.”
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This is what we have come to expect from creationists is it not – things which are easily shown to be blatant outright lies. This is why I have no patience for them anymore.
People have built empires on lies before and they do not last. In the end, truth will prevail.
Quote mining? Oh, surely not. No, no, you must be mistaken.
Why, AIG’s own website contains a post, What Are the Dangers of Quote Mining? | Answers in Genesis, in which they explain that “To put it bluntly, quote mining is a version of lying.”
What’s more, the post’s closing words reflect the impeccable standards for which AIG is known: “We don’t need to resort to cheap shots or quote mining. “Do unto others what you would have others do unto you” is still our motto, as Christ’s followers!”.
Yikes! Linked to the wrong post. Meant to reference Christy, post 3. Sigh.
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AIG is mean and nasty to everyone who disagrees with them, even the YEC group they split from. I guess if BioLogos wanted to impress them they could build an authentic ark that doesn’t float (but has cash registers), or maybe some animatronics moderators.
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Welcome to the forum,@Tedinoz. After years here, I still mess up, so you are amongst friends. I agree, the irony is thick with this one. While difficult to ignore them at times, I find myself most at peace when I do so.
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“Yea hath God said?”
That’s how it all starts. From there, scientists eat away at the “inaccurate,” “mythic,” “poetic”, and “weak” Word of God. Scoffingly they claim, “all things continue as they were from the beginning” (II Peter 3:3). And so there was no Garden of Eden, no Adam, no Eve, no Original Sin.
I have three main points: First, Theistic Evolution makes God a terrible, heartless thing, second, it strips from His Son the purpose of the cross, and third, it removes from us His people our dignity as image bearers.
A god who created the world through a process of death, suffering, and lust, and then lied about it, calling it “good”—that is not my God. My God is the God of Psalm 86 “full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth.” My God is efficient, and orderly and everything He does reflects that. To believe in evolution is one thing, to blame God for it is quite another.
Second, death came into the world through man’s sin (1 Cor. 15-28) and, when man fell, all of creation came under God’s wrath (Rom. 8:22). Scripture is clear, death did not exist before the fall of our first parents. We don’t know what a world without death looked like; we weren’t there.
We do know what the Bible tells us. That death is an enemy. That Christ came, to rescue us from sin and that on the cross and through the resurrection, death was conquered. If death did not come into the world through man, why did Christ need to be a man? Why did Christ need to take on our sins to deliver us from death? Theistic Evolution changes our view of the cross and denigrates Christ’s sacrifice.
Third, who are we? Well, Theistic Evolutionists are a little vague on this. According to them, we descended from a common ancestor (code word for something a little less developed than a monkey) at least millions of years ago. We, like other races underwent a process of evolution, and have been remarkably successful as a species. But what happened to all the half-humans? Did they have a soul? Where do they reside eternally? Did they receive the gospel? Did they sin? Theistic Evolutionists don’t really have an answer.
Over my time at Calvin, I’ve talked and debated with many theistic evolutionists each time I ask them the same question, “can you give me Biblical proof for your theory?” Each time there are blank looks, wordy explanations of how to read the Bible through science… but no proof. No reason for why God left his church, including the writers of Scripture, in the dark about creation for thousands of years and then revealed the truth to them in the 19th century through work of an apostate prelate-turned-biologist named Charles Darwin. But no answer was to me more startling or enlightening than the response of my biology teacher: “there is no Biblical evidence for Theistic Evolution.”
And so it comes down to this, who are you going to believe? Sinful man who distorts the world and then applies this distortion which he calls science to God’s infallible, holy, word? Or God, who tells us just how it happened, who is faithful and true and unchanging, who speaks to us clearly (Num. 12:8)?
It is with sadness that I affirm AIG’s statement.
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This video is lengthy but well worth a listen.
My name is Erika, I’m a primatologist, and in early June I visited the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. It turns out, there is far more incorrect, and potentially downright deceptive, in these attractions than I had ever imagined.
Join me in an unnecessarily deep dive into Midwest Creationism and the world of evangelical pseudoscience!
Everything Wrong with the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter
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You mentioned God would be ugly if he used evolution because evolution contains pain, suffering and death…… have you read the gospel of Jesus Christ? Looks like Yahweh used pain, suffering and death to bring about new life. Do you know what else uses pain, suffering and death to bring about new life? Evolution. Natural selection results in gradual changes overtime occurring as speciation , new species, new life. After all God could have just came down and zapped a bunch of people and helped a bunch of people and his son Jesus Christ helped with it ever dying. God could have used some to ing other than sacrifices. He could have requested apology letters and repentance.
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Christ came to conquer death because it was evil. If God created the world through death and the world he created was perfect( which the Bible affirms) than death must be good and perfect. But the Bible is clear, the wages of sin is death. Death is evil and ugly, as is the unproven theory of theistic evolution.
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Well at least we know you don’t understand evolution at all so that makes your comments meaningless.
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Really? If my comments are meaningless it should be easy for you to give Biblical counter- evidence. And quite honestly, I don’t care about evolution, (in much the same way that you seem to have little regard for the Bible.)
So what kind of death did Christ come to conquer? Was it physical death or was it spiritual death?
I ask because in genesis , my favorite book in the Bible, God says if Adam eats of the fruit he will die and he will die on that day. Correct?
Genesis 2:17
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.”
But we know that after eating the fruit he continued to live several times longer than I will if I live a full life.
Also if he was immortal and could not physically die why would there be a tree of life that sustains eternal life in the garden they were allowed to eat from? Why would immortals eat a fruit that kept you alive?
Would it not make more sense that the death God was preventing was a physical death with the fruit. They ate from the fruit to stay alive physically. Spiritually, since they’ve not sinned yet, they had eternal spiritual life. That’s why when they are from the tree of good and bad he did not physically die, but spiritually died of that day. He sinned and the wages of that sin is the destruction of your soul. Then he was kicked out of the garden so he could not keep himself physically alive.
How do you make sense of it all?
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Your comments about evolution, which you don’t seem to care about but feel compelled to dispute, are meaningless.
If the Bible was a science text and actually said anything about evolution sure, but it isn’t and it doesn’t.
The Bible says nothing about meteorology but we can forecast the weather.
The Bible says nothing about nuclear physics, but we understand how the sun generates light.
The Bible says nothing about orbital mechanics, but we know the sun does not revolve around the Earth.
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