Dr. Albert Mohler has been interacting with evangelicals and Catholics who believe and promote evolutionary theory.
I really appreciate Dr. Mohler’s polemical writing on this subject. He is careful and clear about what his opponents believe. He is insightful and thorough about what is at stake.
This is from his column today –
The American literary critic Frederick Crews once spoke of defenders of evolutionary theory who attempt to make Darwinism appear more congenial to the Christian faith than it truly is. These defenders, Crews wrote, present a vision of Darwin and Darwinism that “is often prettified to make it safe for doctrines that he himself was sadly compelled to leave behind.” The prettifying of evolution continues, even in today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal.
Current mainstream models of evolution simply do not allow for the notion of a divinely-created soul. As a matter of fact, the reigning physicalist and materialist understandings that underpin evolutionary theory do not really leave any room for the existence of the soul at all.
For evangelicals, the direct lesson is that any accommodation to evolutionary theory comes with huge and inescapable theological costs. There is no way to affirm an historical Adam while holding to any mainstream model of evolution, and there is no way to affirm the Gospel without an historical Adam.
Furthermore, accommodations to evolutionary theory never end. There will always be “unfinished business” that will demand further theological concessions.
This is where the prettifying of Darwinism hits the wall. The real meaning of evolution’s central doctrines runs directly counter to the central doctrines of Christianity. Accommodation with evolution is a disastrous doctrinal strategy.