young earth or old earth?
young earth or old earth: do answers exist?
young earth or old earth: answers do exist
young earth or old earth revealed
young earth or old earth revealed, part two
young earth or old earth: the testimony of theology
young earth or old earth: the testimony of theology, part two
Theistic evolution as a theory is basically the same as atheistic evolution; the only difference is, in atheistic evolution life evolves from non- living matter; and in theistic evolution, God zaps the non- living matter with life and it evolves from there.
Theologically, this theory is supposed to address the ‘mistaken’ theology which the Church held since its inception, that we were living in a young universe, based on a plain reading of Scripture. But the theology of evolution does so much violence to the gospel, that it cannot be harmonized with Scripture in any way.
For example, in Rom 5:12, Paul writes:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned–
The New Testament clearly teaches that death is the consequence of sin, and that the creation was perfect and sinless — death was not — until one man sinned. Death not only spread to all men, but to all creation, we learn in Rom 8, as a result of one man’s sin:
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Rom 8:19-21
Paul was not a physicist, but a tentmaker, yet here he states that the creation is in bondage to decay, which is a very succinct way of summarizing the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
It is only because Gen 1 through 3 are literal and historic truth, that one perfect and sinless Man, Jesus Christ, could die to satisfy the wage of sin for everyone else. One man brought death, and one Man brought life. That is the what Paul is teaching in Romans.
Paul received this revelation from the Holy Spirit, and could not have come to this conclusion unless he understood Gen 1 through 3 to be literal and historic truth.
For if Adam came about by the process of evolution, then death reigned long before Adam, in contradiction to the gospel. If the first cause of death was Adam’s sin, as Romans says, then death could not have been employed to create Adam. If Adam was not a historic person, but an allegory indicating all men, then how did all men become infected with the sin nature? If the first cause of death was not Adam’s sin, then the death of Jesus Christ on the cross was in vain.
Christians who accept theistic evolution, and who also accept the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ on the cross, do so because they do not realize that the theology of both positions is mutually exclusive. Evolution, because its foundational tenet is death as a creative force, denies the cross, and the cross denies evolution. They cannot both be true.
This is why so many Christian children, who are raised in the church, leave the faith in college. They become convinced evolutionists, and the two are mutally exclusive from a theological standpoint. But is evolution in fact true science? When we get to the science side of this debate, we will see that science, mathematics, logic, theology, and history all proclaim its falsity.
Do you have more questions about the theology of theistic evolution?
Continued in young earth or old earth: the gap theory