11/13/2011

Addendum, Fossils, Adam, Theodicy

I presented a summarized version of the previous post to Peter Enns and his response was this:

"Barlow, I will grant you one point. I have been very clear that evolution definitely creates theological problems. But, that doesn’t mean evolution is wrong. It means we have theological changes before us. The question is whether we want to address them."

This is a disappointing response, I think, because it essentially means that Enns is willing to leap before he looks. Even before figuring out how a good God could create, on purpose, a Hobbesian state of nature, he accepts that this is so and decides to treat it as a research problem.

This is probably an oversimplification, but it seems like someone with theological training and a relatively traditional faith would prioritize things differently. Figuring out whether humans actually evolved from something non-human doesn't just entail finding a new way to read the scriptures. That might the first instinct of a biblical scholar, but it is near-sighted. Despite Enns's point about evolution's (in the hands of mainstream Christian scientists) not being an alternative, natural religion, he is radically changing his own faith to accommodate it. How far can Christianity bend before it becomes another religion? I admit that the apostle's creed remains mostly untouched by evolutionary theory, and this is probably why the Vatican has not found it too hard to accept evolution of the human body. But you need original sin to tell the kind of story Enns probably used to tell ... the kind of story most of us Presbyterians tell. I don't know; this whole thing is just sad to me. I don't begrudge almost anyone else for believing in human evolution. I just find it hard to respect the process by which Enns got there. His ducks just aren't in a row. He's thrown out all the ballast and now has to figure out how to land the balloon....