I saw this article on the Aquila Report and thought I would respond, since I have posted previously on this particular topic. The author (David Wallover, a PCA minister) of this editorial is himself responding to a blog post written by Ken Ham.
Here’s how it goes. Some time ago Tim Keller posted a video on Youtube in which he speaks about the relationship between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Then, recently, Tim Keller wrote an article on Biologos in which he made this statement:
Many secular and many evangelical voices agree on one ‘truism’—that if you are an orthodox Christian with a high view of the authority of the Bible, you cannot believe in evolution in any form at all. New Atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and creationist writers such as Ken Ham seem to have arrived at consensus on this, and so more and more in the general population are treating it as given. If you believe in God, you can’t believe in evolution. If you believe in evolution, you can’t believe in God.
Ken Ham’s blog post corrects this misrepresentation:
I have stated many times that there are many men and women of God who believe in evolution or millions of years. But I am also quick to say that salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ—Christ alone! Believing in evolution or millions of years is not necessarily a salvation issue per se, but it definitely is an authority issue—a battle over the authority of the Word of God. So to make the statement Tim Keller has declared about me—that,“If you believe in God, you can’t believe in evolution. If you believe in evolution, you can’t believe in God”—is a gross misrepresentation.
Then you have David Wallover’s response to Ken Ham:
It becomes evident to this reader that Ken Ham has himself misrepresented Tim Keller’s position.
When one “clicks” on the link provided in Ham’s article to Keller’s discussion of the relationship between Genesis 1 and 2, one hears a very different position than the one which Ham summarizes in his article. Keller is holding that Genesis 1 and 2 only contradict one another IF (!) they can be shown to say opposite things at the same time and in the same relationship or frame-of-reference (the law of non-contradiction).
Keller is insisting that in fact Genesis 1 and 2 say different things at different times in two different frames-of-reference; and thus Genesis 1 and 2 are not contradictory. One may not agree with Keller, and my point here is not to defend Keller’s position, per se. I am simply pointing out that Ham is equally guilty of misrepresentation; He has not accurately represented Keller’s own position.
Well, this certainly got me interested. I’ve been following Tim Keller’s subtle attacks on the authority of Scripture for some time. Those who support him in this are always quick to praise him as a super-intellectual who is probably speaking about things way too complex for us lesser mortals. And that’s the exact impression I got from Mr. Wallover’s take on the whole situation.
And then I watched the video in question. I’m not sure exactly which video Mr. Wallover saw, but in the one I watched, Tim Keller said this:
If you believe that the Bible is true, you have to believe that there are two literally genres. You have to. And that’s one of the reasons that I do not take every part of Genesis 1 literally is because if I do, it undermines the authority of the Bible.
There is no mention of different frames of reference. The very reason that Mr. Keller gives for believing that Genesis 1 is a poem and Genesis 2 is history is that if they are both history, then they would contradict each other and the authority of the Bible would be compromised. Listen for yourself. If you start at about the 4:00 mark, you’ll get the whole context.
This is why I believe Ken Ham is correct when he says:
…for whatever reason, these conservative scholars like Tim Keller seem to be blind to the fact they have two different approaches to hermeneutics—one approach for Genesis 1–11 and one for the rest of Scripture.
This was something Francis Schaeffer warned us about 40 or 50 years ago. And much of what he said back then has come to pass just as he said it would.
Could Ken Ham have misunderstood what Tim Keller was saying? Of course he could – Keller is all over the place when he gives explanations. All you have to do is watch the Martin Bashir interview and you’ll see what I mean. It’s almost like he believes that an answer must be complex and confusing to be true. But in assessing this video and article by Tim Keller, Ken Ham is correct.
What’s lost in all of this, though, is how PCA pastors, who have taken a vow to uphold the Westminster Confession, can publicly contradict that vow and get away with it. And they do it because there are quite a few others in the PCA who will aid and abet them, even stooping to posting comments and writing articles attacking (oh so subtly!) those who dare to oppose them.
That’s why I bother to write posts like this – I’m just joining the conversation.