In this post I critique a video interview done by Biologos (a theistic evolution group) entitled The Danger of Preaching on Genesis. You can watch the video below or it can be accessed here. I hesitate to drive any traffic to Biologos because it is a dangerous group that compromises God's word. Please visit their website with caution.
This is their interview with Dr. Joel Hunter, pastor of a very large church in Orlando, Florida. I have provided the transcript to the video interview with Pastor Hunter's words in red and my commentary in black.
Video Transcription
It is a very big risk for pastors in conservative Evangelical
churches to venture forth and say, "Look, let's be humble about
this." But the other side of this is, we have probably, I would say, the
vast majority of our people sitting in those pews who are very uncomfortable
with, "Look, it was six 24-hour days, and if you think anything else, then
you don't believe in scripture."
Dr. Hunter recognizes
that many people in his congregation are “uncomfortable” with the idea of
accepting Genesis Chapter 1 in a literal way. He thinks that it is risky for a
pastor to question the literal reading of Genesis 1. Presumably pastors who do believe in a literal reading will
arrogantly accuse non-literalists of not believing in scripture. He implies that it is humility that drives a
pastor to seek a non-literal interpretation of Genesis 1. This also implies that the literalist
interpretation is arrogant.
Notice how Dr. Hunter’s
philosophy of biblical interpretation seems to be driven by what others
think. He worries that if he teaches
Genesis 1 in a literal way then the majority of people in his congregation will
be uncomfortable. He worries that if he
doesn’t teach it in a literal way then some literalists will accuse him of not
believing in Scripture. But, should a
pastor base his sermon upon how people will feel about what he says? Should a preacher change his exposition of
God’s word to fit the sensibilities of those who may be uncomfortable with his
message?
These are science teachers. These are scientists. These are
bright businessmen and businesswomen and people who have been thinking, and
they just say, "Wait a minute. God is God. God could choose any way he
wants to create the world." And it doesn't make it any less marvelous. As
a matter of fact, it makes it more marvelous because he would be so intricate
in his creation.
Dr. Hunter identifies
those in his congregation that are uncomfortable with a plain reading of
Genesis 1. They are scientists and
science teachers. They are intelligent
people in the business world. They are
people who have been thinking. Of course
this implies that all businessmen in
his congregation are uncomfortable with God creating in six 24-hour days. It implies that all of the scientists and science teachers in his church do not
believe in a literal six-day creation. Does
Dr. Hunter know for a fact that all of his church’s science teachers,
scientists, and business persons are uncomfortable with a six-day creation? Or
is this a presumption?
Also implied in Dr.
Hunter’s statement is that thinking people can’t accept a six-day creation. He supposes that when a person really thinks intelligently,
he comes to the conclusion that the literal interpretation of Genesis 1 is
wrong. These bright thinkers apparently
conclude that God is so marvelous that He can create in any way that He
wants. Of course, it doesn’t take a
rocket scientist to come to that conclusion.
Both literalists and non-literalists can agree that God could have created in any way that He
chose. What Dr. Hunter seems to forget
is that we don’t have to speculate as to which method God chose to use to
create for He plainly told us in Genesis 1 that He chose to create in six
literal days.
According to Dr. Hunter,
a non-literal view of Genesis 1 gives God more glory because it shows the
marvelous way that God is “so intricate in his creation.” Does a non-literal view of Genesis 1 actually
bring more glory to God than a belief in six-day creation? Let’s think about this. All popular non-literal views believe that
the earth is millions of years old and that the fossilized remains of animal
life in the rocks all happened millions of years before man arrived on the
planet. This means that God planned for
the animals to experience millions of years of death, destruction, bloodshed,
pain, and catastrophic diseases before sin ever entered the world through
Adam. And God supposedly called this
“very good”. In contrast, a plain
reading of Genesis 1 tells us that God created a perfect world with no death or
suffering. It was a world teeming with
life and vibrancy. It was a world of
order and perfection. How could God do
anything less? It was a world that God
blessed and called good and even very good. It was a world unmarred by sin and not
subject to the law of sin and death.
Which kind of creation brings God more glory; millions of years of death
and destruction, or a perfect paradise free from all suffering and death?
When people say, "Look, if the scripture's not plain to the
uneducated mind, if the scripture can't be understood by what it says to
somebody like me, then is the resurrection really just a story? Is it just a
metaphor for rising up out of constraints and overcoming the death that we face
in everyday life"? And so on and so forth, and, "Was there really a
resurrection?"
That's what's at risk for many people, and I don't, again, want
to dismiss or denigrate those who hold a literalist view because they honestly
believe that if they vary off that, then they themselves will have to question
the truth of scripture.
Here Dr. Hunter tries to
make the case that one can still believe in a literal resurrection of Jesus,
and yet not believe in a literal six-day creation. But this isn’t the point. Six-day creationists don’t say that
non-literal creationists aren’t Christians or that they don’t believe in the
resurrection. What they do say is that
non-literalists have no logical basis for accepting the historical account of
the resurrection and yet rejecting the historical account of a six-day
creation. It is illogical for a student
of Scripture to reject one historical account (six-day creation) because of alleged
scientific reasons against it and yet accept the other (the resurrection of
Jesus) in spite of the scientific reasons against it. By the way, there are great scientific
reasons to believe in both a six-day creation and the resurrection of
Jesus. What is at stake here is that we
don’t have the luxury of picking and choosing which parts of Scripture we want
to accept and which we reject. One
doesn’t have the freedom to pretend that Genesis 1 isn’t supposed to be taken
literally just because one is embarrassed by its supposed unscientific
explanation of origins. Genesis 1 is
historical narrative. It always has been
and always will be. There is absolutely
no grammatical, linguistical, historical, contextual, or theological reason to
view the creation account in Genesis as anything but literal. The only reason to view Genesis 1 in a
non-literal way is because of the supposed scientific proof for millions of
years of death and suffering before Adam sinned.
You don't ever want to bully or somehow feel the hubris to call
someone a name because they won't believe like you believe, and that goes for
someone who is a literalist as well as somebody who is a liberal. Having said that, there are those with a lot
more capacity intellectually than they're using, and they need to be given
permission to use that intellectual capacity to understand the fullness of God
and the great mystery of God.
Unfortunately, Dr. Hunter
commits double-speak in the above paragraph.
He claims that he doesn’t want to denigrate the literalist and then he
goes on and does that exact thing by implying that literalists just aren’t
using all their intellectual capacity.
Throughout this interview Dr. Hunter has insinuated that the literalist
is arrogant. He claims that it is
humility that drives a pastor to search for a different way to interpret
Genesis 1. In reality he has shown that his view is the one driven by
pride. He worries about what people will
think of him if he teaches a literal six-day creation. He has a high regard for the power class in
his congregation, i.e. the scientists and business people and doesn’t want to
make them uncomfortable with him as a preacher.
He insinuates that anyone who interprets Genesis 1 literally is an
unthinking person. In his view, a
literalist does not understand the fullness of God and the great mystery of God
because he just isn’t willing to accept the evolutionary scientific consensus.
(http://biologos.org/resources/multimedia/joel-hunter-on-the-danger-of-preaching-on-genesis accessed on November 11, 2014)