Atheists should be readying themselves for occasions of debate with alleged defenders of the Christian faith. Opportunity exists to knock over your opponent by destroying his or her theology.
However, the opportunity is a key and it works only on a certain lock. Nevertheless, that lock is a very commonplace lock - wide spread throughout the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney and rife throughout the evangelical church worldwide. The lock gives appearance of being secure but it is not secure at all. It is the heresy of Theistic Evolution.
All that Atheist debaters need do is a little probing to ascertain whether their opponent is a Theistic Evolutionist. Once confirmed it is all easy from there. You can play with your opponent for as long as you like - as a cat does with its prey - until you go for the key and bring undone your opponent. The greater the earthly stage the greater your earthly triumph.
Before proceeding further I have to set down some background.
Immediately prior to the Incarnate ministry of the Son of God there came John the Baptist proclaiming words to the effect of "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven [God] is at hand." (Matt. 3:2) Later the Son of God Incarnate had occasion to say " ... the Kingdom of God has come to you." (Luke 11:20)
It is the Kingdom of God upon which all Israel's hopes rested and it is the Kingdom of God which the Son of God Incarnate ushered in - though not yet fully realized. It is not the State, it is not the church visible nor is it any one or more denominations of allegedly Christian churches, though several members of the Kingdom may be present within those bodies (or not). The Kingdom of God is not visible.
For more understanding on this premise I quote from John Bright's work "The Kingdom of God" page 92. (Bright's work was once necessary reading at Moore Theological College) Referring to the message of the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Bright says:
"It is the Kingdom of God toward which all history moves. There justice shall reign (11:3-5); there peace will be unbroken (Isa. 2:2-4, Mic. 4:1-3). There Israel shall find at last her destiny to be a blessing to the entire world (Isa. 2:3, Mic. 4:2; cf. Gen. 12:3). God is the real ruler of that Kingdom. The Prince of David's line is imbued with God's spirit, and by that spirit he rules; he is God's own charismatic [Judges-like figure] (11:2). He stands before us as no fierce warrior, but as a little child (9:6) established in his rule by God's power (9:7). He reigns over a people transformed through their obedience to the divine Will. It is God's Kingdom and it will endure forever (9:7).
And, then, with a change of imagery that Kingdom is described not as a transfigured age of David, but as a recovery of the lost bliss of Eden. An Edenlike peace reigns in all the earth (11:6-9): peace among men, peace in nature, peace with God. The balance in creation, upset so long ago by sin, is now restored—for God's law is supreme. If the prophet had said that there will be a new Eden, a new Adam, it would hardly be surprising. He did not, of course, but the idea is there. Keep it in mind! We shall in due time hear of a new Adam in whom all are made alive (I Cor. 15:22, 45-49)."
While some other aspects of Bright's work are questionable his explanation here of the activity of God since the Fall of Adam is soundly in tune with Scripture and Reformed doctrine pertaining to the restoration of the Creation through the Kingdom of God fully realized in the coming again of the Second Adam - the Son of God.
This restoration activity is the Achilles' heel and key to undoing the heresy of Theistic Evolution. The Atheist need only ask his or her debating opponent "If, as you say, your God used evolution to create all things, to what then is the creation being restored or regenerated?" (Matt. 19:28)
Any reply allowing for an evolutionary order is contrary to the order of creation envisioned by the Spirit led prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 11:6-9) because evolution provides death, suffering and competition in, at least, the animals before sin entered the world. Any reply excluding an evolutionary order exposes an inconsistency in his or her present world view. It does not take much mental exercise for the Atheist to develop the argument from here. The squirming of the Theistic Evolutionist will be palpable as his or her theology of the New Creation, the Kingdom of God fully realized, indeed his or her whole theology will dissemble before your eyes.
However, your victory here while appearing to knock out Christianity, will not triumph over the Kingdom of God. It is a victory only over a generation of heretics. Even as the apostatizing Israel of old appeared defeated by pagans (aided by God) there was a remnant among the exiled to whom God spoke words of promise towards fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.
Nevertheless, your victory over heretics today has value and ought to be pursued if only for the sake of truth alone.
Sam Drucker
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3 comments:
I once heard he high priest of atheism, Richard Dawkins, astutely opine to Phillip Adams,
"Yes, in its most naive form you will get people who say that the story of Genesis, that the creation took 6 days to accomplish, you simply have to read each of those days as, whatever it is, 100 million years or a thousand million years, you get the right answer. I mean that's very, very naive, of course. You are absolutely right that there is this tendency to resort to metaphor. Which maddens me because I suspect that the original authors of, for example, the book of Genesis, in no sense thought of it as a metaphor. I suggest that they thought that they were probably writing down folk-tales that had been handed down by word of mouth. But they believed them to be factually true, and the vast majority of people in history have believed them to be factually true. So I think that to reinterpret them as metaphor is a kind of evasion."
In other words, he'd call the Sydney Anglican Heretics dishonest and irrational.
Richard Kilty, a humanist, in an edition of the Humanist News, first asks if evolution and the Christian religion are reconcilable, complementary or both. He answers by expressing that:
[W]e are not dealing on this amorphous level, instead we want to know about the antithesis of man in evolution and man in Christianity. And we do have an anti-thesis: Acceptance of evolution precludes the fundamentals of Christianity, to wit, Garden, Adam and Eve, Fall, Redeemer, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. Acceptance of evolution requires the concatenation: fish-amphibians-reptiles-mammals-apeman-man with all transformations occurring naturally. This dichotomy is irreconcilable.
Kilty goes on to ruminate with acute insight that the two are not reconcilable; that a child taught evolutionary concepts (including long ages), will have his belief in God disturbed: '...how subversive is evolutionary theory to Church dogma.'
From the mouth of pagans comes truth. And the Sydney Anglicans allow this filth, this God-dishonouring philosophy, to be preached from its pulpits and from its theological training college.
Question: Is God happy that they lie and twist his unchanging truth to coincide with current pagan worldviews?
John, as with Israel of old God is patient but not without sending prophets to call the people back to his Word. Obviously his patience does come to an end.
Sydney Episcopalians should note the about-turn in R.C. Sproul and more recently R. A Mohler at
evangelicalnews to realise God is at work for change and that God-dishonouring philosophy cannot be tolerated interminably.
Sam Drucker
For the very reason you espouse it is not difficult to tackle Theistic Evolutionists and seek an explanation of how evolution sits with the Word of God.
If they hang around long enough you will find them descend into waffle and indecision.
God is an absolute God who desires absolute faith. Theistic Evolutionists can never produce this because, by what they are prepared to believe, they do not desire absolute faith themselves.
Neil
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