Is there any legitimacy to the claim that EC leads to atheism?

Yes, Rhett specifically talked about this. He felt like he had been lied to about other stuff, also.

1 Like

Maybe the starting place is ‘old time religion’, though – recognition of God’s purity and his rights, and our sinfulness (disobedience), and personal remorse and repentance, followed by at least a desire for obedience.

By this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep His commandments.

Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

 
And there is reward – God can and does reveal himself to us, miraculously. I love the present continuous tense of the YLT:

He who is having my commands, and is keeping them, that one it is who is loving me, and he who is loving me shall be loved by my Father, [u]and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him[/u].

2 Likes

(Providence is miraculous – see Maggie’s wonderful sequence, and gbob’s translator.)

2 Likes

Responses on this thread have been a joy to read. Like others I would encourage you to keep asking questions. Dont be tempted to repress or wallowing in your doubt, allow it to do its job which is to motivate you to find the truth out for yourself (which you seem to be doing). I believe, when handled correctly, doubt can actually be a powerful means of grace. So I’d encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to wield those doubts for your good to his glory.

My two pennies worth on the fate of the lost - it is a tricky one. I also think it is easy to miss an important factor: God’s justice is not punitive but restorative. In other words, it is not so much about punishment for punishments sake as much as it is setting the record straight and righting wrongs.

Take the exile of Israel and Judah. God’s justice comes down upon them not as the revenge of a rejected lover but as the consequence of their actions. Namely, covenant unfaithfulness expressed in rampent idolartry, opression of the poor and needy, and abuse of the land’s resources. God then uses Assyria and Babylon and his tools too recover the honour of his name; bring justice to the oppressors; and give the land rest.

Hell, whether eternal conscious torement, conditional imortality, or simply a place where sin is unrestrained and God is total absent is not so much about revenge but setting the record straight. The honour of God’s name is restored; the wicked are brought to justice; and the earth is given eternal rest by way of new creation.

I’m not saying it resolves the problem of hell, but seeing at as restorative justice (Making things right) rather than punative (revenge) does go some way to reconcilling it with a belief in God’s goodness and love. We don’t expect a good and loving person to seek vindictive revenge and call it justice. We would expect a good and loving person to desire to see wrongs made right for sake of justice and fairness.

That said, I personally believe that in the case of those who genuinely have never heard the gospel, at the final judgement they will be judged on what they do know of God. Whether that condemns or excuses them, I do not know. What I do know is what Abraham knew even as he asked the question. “Will not the God of all the earth do what is right?” Yes, yes I believe he will.

Edit: I wrote this earlier and posted before hitting refresh. I see the conversation has since moved on. I hope the above does not take things off topic.

3 Likes

My journey has been from all but YEC and theistic evolution thru ID and out in to the terrifying open skies of all but atheist physicalism. But for the witness of the early Church.

2 Likes

Could you help me understand what ID is exactly? I know it’s not tied to any specific religion as it’s more like general theism, but it seems to me that if God used evolution that is “intelligent design.”

My two brothers are on the EC end of the spectrum. One brother works in christian ministries and my other devout brother is a nurse who uses his vacation time overseas working with a christian based organization that provides free medical care to 3rd world populations. If EC leads to atheism, then my brothers didn’t get the memo.

6 Likes

Yes, I am not Reformed but a page I merely posted a link to that is regarding William Lane Craig breaking down theories of atonement was mocked because he has a semi-Molinist interpretation. Penal substitution is merely one part of a comprehensive understanding of the doctrine. My dad was a pastor for several years and while he never did look into evolution, that is something he’s studied quite a bit. If ecumenism could just mean treating other Christians as actual brothers and sisters in Christ (not thinking all religions or even denominations are true at the same time) we would be a much better witness to the world. I dabbled reading some atheist Reddit threads recently that were asking if they wanted immortality. Here’s a pithy saying that summarizes it in my own words: Heaven would be Hell if God isn’t there and Hell would be Heaven if God was there. Without an infinite and good God, doing something fun for the 6,983,382,810th time would be a Hell worse than the movie Groundhog Day where all you long for is non-existence. So the atheist is correct in saying this from their point of view (no gods exist). Pinecreek responded to a universalist on Youtube that even if all people make it heaven eventually, he would ask God to remove him from existence. It is a terribly sad mentality.

2 Likes

I think 1 peter 3:18-19 and 1 Peter 4:6 are important in this regard.

18Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison,

and 1 Peter 4:6

“For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.”

I believe that the ‘spirits in prison’ are all the dead who never heard past and future. Jesus preached to them. I believe many accepted, but not all of them. All, however, have a chance to accept.

American Standard Version. (1995). (1 Pe 4:6). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

3 Likes

C.S. Lewis’ take in The Great Divorce and about Emeth in The Last Battle are thought provoking.

I also remember reading decades ago (probably longer ago than I’ve read The Chronicles – and that’s been a while!) an account of an aboriginal tribesman in Africa who knew that the animism of his fellows was wrong. So he set out on his own, leaving the tribe, seeking. And he was found of Christ because in his travels he ‘happened upon’ some Christian missionaries laboring in or among another tribe or tribes. I wish I knew the citation for the story, because I don’t think it was apocryphal.

1 Like

Klax, what do you mean by thee above in your context of atheistic physicalism?

I spent about 15 years in serious doubt about whether or not Christianity was true. I heard every atheistic argument there is, and eventually it boiled down to two things for my, my Turkish translator experience and the obvious dedication of that first generation of Christians who acted in every way like they believed a dead man rose from the dead. I couldn’t get around either thing.

1 Like

Agreed. And Lewis didn’t only share his thoughts on this in his fiction. From Mere Christianity:

There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. (pp. 208–09)

Practically every idea about hell that used to be considered beyond the evangelical pale was advocated or at least hinted at by Lewis. When evangelicals a few decades ago adopted him as their spokesperson, it led to all these debates (inclusivism, postmortem repentance, purgatory, annihilation) moving from external threats to in-house questions. (And I think that’s been a good thing!)

8 Likes

Interesting point of view Marshall. I like it. I wish I had made that observation, but then again, that isn’t exactly the area I majored in during my life. lol

2 Likes

No, who would want to major on that? Yet somehow I ended up accidentally doing so at seminary. It led to four research papers and a graduating project all on different aspects of hell. (That’s why, even though I really enjoyed it, I tend to call my time at seminary “four years of hell.”)

If the Lewis thing is intriguing, feel free to check out the whole paper:

5 Likes

Wow, you really did major in that. lol. I think Rob Bell should have said “On hell, see the Bible” He might have fared better.

Rationality gets round everything but your last point for me too gbob. Otherwise, other people’s miracles don’t travel well, no matter how they utterly convince the individual. I have one of course.

3 Likes

BioLogos needs to understand that evolution for Evangelicals is a theological issue, not a scientific issue. Solving it scientifically is not the answer. The Bible is not the Word of God, it is God’s salvation History.

The sad thing about this is that God has given us the answer to the evolution issue right in the first sentence of the Gospel of John; In the Beginning was the Word/the Logos of God/Jesus Christ.

If Evangelicals hear their leaders say that the world was created in 6 days, because that is what the Bible says, why should they belief anyone else that this is the Christian point of view? But that is not what the John 1 says.

BioLogos has not made a strong theological argument for E. C., so it has not won the theological argument over evolution. It seems to seek an Evangelical faith with evolution added, which is a non-starter for most Evangelicals.

1 Like

In defense of BioLogos, I think the the theological position is that evolution is not a theological issue. Good theology has been presented giving interpretations compatable with evolution, but also compatable with other views, as the position taken is that the Bible does not address scientific issues as such, leaving us free to pursue those studies. Perhaps that leaves us vaguely unsatisfied, but we shouldn’t read something into the Bible it does not say.

8 Likes

I agree with you Roger. It is a theological issue. I am an EC who believes in the historicity of Scripture–no silly accommodationalism works for me. God ordered the earth and waters to bring forth life. That means the earth and water were doing the work of bringing forth life–in a simple nutshell that is what evolution says.

There are two things that drive people from the faith–teaching them a false science and/or teaching them that the word of God has no connection to factual history at all. Both of these broad roads leads to atheism. When young earthers see geological data they begin to squirm trememdously–I did. Maybe it is a blessing that most young earthers don’t see the geological data.

But equally when one tries to lay the groundwork of faith on stories one believes to be inspired but factually false, the dichotomy of saying something is true when it isn’t believed to be true, also drives many away. As my atheist boss said when I asked him if he could accept Christianity but believe the Genesis stories were not true, “But Glenn, it would still be untrue!!!” There wasn’t much of an argument against his statement that I could muster. How do you tell a scientist to believe that which you claim is factually false?

BioLogos has not made a strong theological argument for E. C., so it has not won the theological argument over evolution. It seems to seek an Evangelical faith with evolution added, which is a non-starter for most Evangelicals.

I agree with you. The position generally laid out here is that God is a rather useless addon to science. I have met Gerald Cleaver, (he won’t remember me), who wrote a set of articles on string theory for Biologos. He proclaimed that string theory proclaims the glory of God. How? That wasn’t very clear. It had all the appearance of God as a useless, possibly emotional, attachment to string theory. God plays no deep role in the foundation of string theory, nor in its choice of one out of 10^500 possible universes. Of what value is such a God to string theory? None as far as I can tell. It was like saying the sidewalk, or light pole, proclaims the glory of God.

1 Like

And that is the problem. It divorces God from the world he created. It removes any ability to confirm the Bible and moves it from something our ancestors believed to be true to something that can’t tell us anything about earth history, anthropology and maybe not even the moral state of mankind. Why believe mankind is fallen when we don’t believe the story of the Fall happened?

Tipler said and I agree with him:

"Of course, the real reason modern theologians want to keep science divorced from religion is to retain some intellectual territory forever protected from the advance of science. This can only be done if the possibility of scientific investigation of the subject matter is ruled out a priori. Theologians were badly burned in the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions. Such a strategy seriously underestimates the power of science, which is continually solving problems philosophers and theologians have decreed forever beyond the ability of science to solve." ~ Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 7

1 Like