Adventist Review
By Mark Kellner
A recent New York Times op-ed, “The Evangelical Rejection of Reason,”1 would’ve busted a blood-pressure machine had I been connected while reading.
According to authors Karl W. Giberson, a “former professor of physics” at Eastern Nazarene College, and Randall J. Stephens, an associate professor of history there, affirmation of what many of us consider to be the basics of Christian faith, such as belief in a literal, recent, six-day creation, renders one anti-intellectual, and perhaps even un-Christian.
“Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation,” they assert. “Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident, and reactionary.”2
Now, some Seventh-day Adventists would strenuously reject any association with “evangelicals.” Many more equally abhor “fundamentalism” as they understand it. However, in attacking core evangelical beliefs such as Creation and the sanctity of marriage, and in asserting, “Christian theology can incorporate Darwin’s insights and flourish in a pluralistic society,”3 Giberson and Stephens give their blessing to the kind of flaccid faith that likely won’t sustain anyone through anything. They are diminishing, in essence, some of the core beliefs of Adventism.
If the Bible account of Creation isn’t true, as Giberson and Stephens imply in offering to “incorporate” Darwinism in Christian faith, what must logically follow?
If there’s no Creation . . .
. . . where, and how, did sin enter the world?
. . . why do we need a Savior?
. . . from what did God, if He even exists, rest?
. . . why should we rest if, absent Creation, there’s nothing from which God rested?
. . . how can we believe anything else in the Bible?
