Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Dr. Larry Taylor

Monday, September 25, 2006

At the urging of my very godly son-in-law, I recently completed reading Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, an important book that I wish I had read at least a decade ago, but sometimes my evangelical mind is behind the times. Dr. Noll’s analysis is concise, logical, and informative as he underscores the obvious lack of real in-depth thought that characterizes evangelical Christianity at the end of the 20th century and makes a compelling case to trace the origins of evangelical erudite dearth from Enlightenment philosophy blended with American liberty in the 17th and 18th centuries to fundamentalism in general and to dispensationalism, Pentecostalism, and holiness doctrine in particular in the 20th century.

Not being more than a soft dispensationalist who sees general ages and movements in scripture as connected, his gentle attacks on dispensationalism do not bother me. Nor do his equally kind criticisms of Pentecostalism and holiness theology. Noll’s basic point is well taken, viz., that we evangelicals in America have come to believe that our particular way of thinking is biblical, when in reality it is a blend of Enlightenment thinking, Americanisms, and fundamentalist theology that is often anti-intellectual in character.

As Noll delves deeper into the specifics of the outworkings of the ubiquitous unwillingness to think and debate in cooperation with science, philosophy, and psychology, he seems concerned that erroneous thinking has led us into what he terms an overly wooden interpretation of scripture, and also seems to imply that the stories of creation and the flood are not to be taken literally, but instead are intended to teach underlying spiritual lessons.

Certainly, all the stories of the Bible are meant to reveal deep spiritual lessons, and clearly those lessons applied to our lives are more important than the historical facts of the stories. It is more essential to learn from the story of Jonah that obedience to God is vital and that those who rebel forsake their own mercy than it is to understand all the medical implications of a man spending three days in a fish.

Moreover, it is sobering to note that based on a “literal” interpretation of the Bible, churchmen were convinced to the point of being willing to torture and persecute dissenters that the earth was flat, stationary, and the center of the universe, which brings us to the thorny question of creation.

I personally do not believe the young earth theory that teaches that our planet is between six and ten thousand years old. The geological, anthropologic, historic, cosmological, astronomical, spectrographic, and archeological evidence is absolutely overwhelming in conclusion that the earth is old, probably very old, and the creation science evidence for a young earth by sighting discrepancies in carbon dating and dust levels on the moon is so easily countered by real scientists that the only conclusion I can come to is that either the earth is quite old or God created it to appear quite old, in which case He could rightly be charged with deception. The Bible is first and foremost God’s Book, His revelation of Himself, but His creation, nature in all its wonder and splendor, is His secondary Book. I do not believe that one will ever contradict the other, presuming we are reading both correctly.

From a biblical and theological perspective, it seems to me to be quite reasonable to see a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, which quite legitimately and literally can be translated: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth became without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. God did not create the earth formless, but it became so after some sort of cataclysmic event that destroyed its life forms. It may have been created several billion years ago, and beings of all sorts may have slowly evolved on it. The paleontological record is clear that sea creatures were on earth eons before reptiles, which were on earth well before mammals appeared. That is not to say that one species evolved into another, only that large classifications of creatures predated one another. Perhaps God allowed some catastrophic event to destroy life on earth, then recreated as is recorded in Genesis 1:2 ff. I’m not dogmatically saying that that is what happened, only that such a scenario is biblically possible and scientifically conceivable. Perhaps there were also man-like creatures on the earth before the re-creation and replentification.

For my part, as the son of natural scientists and as one who has studied social science at the graduate level, and who has looked at the evidence as best he can, I cannot accept that the earth is merely a few thousand years old.

The universality of Noah’s flood, which Noll also brings up, is a more difficult problem. On the one hand, cultures all over the world contain ancient flood myths, and much of the Genesis story can be explained hydraulically. On the other hand, there are undeniably hundreds of archeological sites that prove human settlements long before Noah’s time (assuming we know the chronology of Noah’s time).

I don’t know what the answer is. I believe that the Bible, unless I’m reading it all wrong, teaches a universal flood (or at least one big enough to drown all human life not on the ark), yet I cannot reconcile that with the archeological sites. Either I’m reading the book of Genesis incorrectly or science is reading God’s secondary Book, the book of nature, incorrectly. Ultimately, I remain certain that both Books – the Bible and Nature – will reconcile and reveal Truth.

In the mean time, I rest in and trust in God, and recognize that it does little for the cause of the Kingdom to mock the efforts and findings of honest scientists and philosophers who are seeking answers to the mysterious puzzle of creation. At the time he wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Noll did not have the input of the later Intelligent Design scientists, who seek to approach the evidence of the Universe scientifically and naturally, and have concluded that, all things considered, there is considerable scientific evidence to lead one to conclude that Nature must have been designed by an enormously intelligent Being. Many fundamentalists are dissatisfied with Intelligent Design because it can only lead one to an intelligent designer, and says nothing about whether that intelligent designer is still alive, is interested in his/her/its design, or intervenes in it in any way. Similarly, many secular scientists, particularly those who seem to have a stake in agnosticism, reject the findings of Intelligent Design because they fear it might lead to a god or gods.

However the debate ultimately works out, Noll’s central points remain convincing, viz., that God designed and intended for us to worship Him with our minds as well as our emotions and spirits, that in general evangelicals have failed to engage the academic and scientific communities in meaningful and humble-teachable dialogue, and that God has called us to learn to think clearly, logically, and carefully about Him, His universe, and His Word.

© 2006 Lawrence Russell Taylor, PhD. All rights reserved worldwide.

Comments

[bryonm]

This is a great article. I'll be reading the book soon...