Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Bruce Waltke Going Nuts

In the video, "The State of the Nation 2", Ken Ham quotes Dr. Bruce Waltke, one of the foremost O.T. scholars in America today, at length. It is a sad thing that so many great Christians are falling into the ID trap of trying to reconcile macro/ human evolution with the Bible. We are in the process of seeing CRAZY interpretations of Genesis beginning to emerge.

Waltke writes:

Francis S. Collins, noted for his leadership of the Human Genome Project, for his recent appointment by President Barack Obama to head up the National Institute of Health and for his founding of BioLogos, has asked me to prepare a white paper by September 15, 2009 on “Identifying the barriers that hinder the typical evangelical theologians from accepting the possibility of creation by means of an evolutionary process.” The paper is one of several to be presented to a conference that has been organized by Francis S. Collins, Alister McGrath, Os Guinness, Tim Keller and Darrel Falk. The purpose of the meeting and papers is to bring together a group of evangelical leaders who will think together about the apparent gulf that currently exists between science and faith, and how the Church can best narrow that gulf without diminishing our shared commitment to the evangelical Christian faith.
To fulfill my assignment I have prepared a brief, anonymous survey-questionnaire, listing several potential barriers. I am asking you as a leading evangelical theologian to check as many barriers that hinder you from accepting creation by the process of evolution.

Read Waltke's whole paper here.


Check out Ken Ham's message here.

God have mercy on the church!

2 comments:

Doug said...

Hey Mark,

I viewed just a little of the video by Ken Ham. Do you think it's right to say that the United States was once a "Christian nation?" I just wonder if God ever looked at one nation, other than maybe Israel (in the OT) as a "Christian nation." Yes, there may have been Christian influences and common grace bestowed on the U.S. in how they initially formed their govt. which included a few leaders who looked to Scripture for guidance, but is calling us a "Christian nation" a little much? I just think this can lead us into the wrong kind of battles. What do you think?

M&M in Japan said...

Hi Doug,
I am curious as to what you mean by, "wrong kind of battles"? Just to reiterate, your question is not addressing the issue of my post, right? I don't think Ham's idea of what a "Christian nation" and your idea of a "Christian nation" has any real bearing on the issue at hand, does it? Please help me to see where I am misunderstanding.

This was my main point: How can Christians who truly believe the Bible to be God's Word wash out Genesis 1-11 so much so that is almost unrecognizable? How does one go from supernatural special creation to theistic evolution (that man came from monkeys... and ultimately one-celled organisms)? That is a scary leap that starts us on a very scary exegetical slope downward.

As to your question, I believe that America has been a culturally Christian country (the percent of people who would call themselves Christian and live according to the Bible) more than it is now. I think you would probably agree with that. Right? I think what Ham is saying is that we are losing our Christian culture that we have, until now, continually maintained in America.