RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) — A member of a group dedicated to fostering dialogue between faith and science claims that a Southern Baptist leader's pronouncements that evolution and Christianity are incompatible undermine evangelical witness to the scientific community.
Mark Sprinkle
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Mark Sprinkle, part of a multidisciplinary group of evangelical scholars called the BioLogos Foundation, wrote in his blog Nov. 8 to criticize Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler. He blasted Mohler's attacks on fellow Christians who believe an evangelical witness will not be considered intellectually serious today if it denies scientific truth.
Mohler has jousted before with the BioLogos forum over his insistence that evolutionary theory and Christianity are competing worldviews that are irreconcilable.
"The theory of evolution is incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ, even as it is in direct conflict with any faithful reading of the Scriptures," Mohler wrote this summer in rebuttal to criticism by a BioLogos vice president.
Sprinkle, who has a Ph.D. in art, said Mohler's logic not only bolsters the arguments of atheists who say the same thing, but his polemical tone arms skeptics with "another proof that our faith is a foolish and destructive lie."
Sprinkle said that Mohler's claim that "one cannot be a fully functioning, authentic Christian and hold that God created using the process of evolution" is not really about the compatibility of science and faith. It is rather, he said, "about the limits that Dr. Mohler has put on God's ability to redeem and transform whomever He so pleases, in whatever manner He so pleases."
Al Mohler
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"Particularly coming from the head of the largest Southern Baptist seminary, Dr. Mohler's repeated implications and suggestions, if not outright pronouncements, that I and anyone else who does not reject evolutionary processes are, therefore, not Christian in any but a nominal or diminished way, not authentic followers of Jesus no matter what we say and despite the evidence of the Holy Spirit both in us and working through us, seems to me to fly directly in the face of one of the central facets of Baptist tradition — that my salvation and relationship with the Father is not a matter for rulers or authorities or institutions to decide," Sprinkle wrote. "Is there not a danger that 21st century ecclesiastical rulers and authorities might unwittingly oppose the Spirit through their all-too-human decrees, though their intention be to defend doctrines that are good and true and right?"
Sprinkle called on Mohler to "refrain from condemning (even by faint praise) those whom the Spirit has sanctified and is sanctifying" and to "put off the too-common practice of acting as if we know everything we need to know about those on the other sides of these issues from what we read on-line."
Mohler responded in his own blog Nov. 9 that he has never questioned the salvation of anyone related to BioLogos and that he takes at face value that their aims are worthy.
"At the same time, Dr. Sprinkle's unavoidable implication is that God's Spirit moves in ways contrary to God's Word," Mohler said. "That I do flatly and energetically reject."
"Virtually every form of theological liberalism arises from an attempt to rescue Christian theology from what is perceived to be an intellectual embarrassment," Mohler said, "whether the virgin conception of Christ, the historicity of the miracles recorded in the Bible, or, in our immediate context, the inerrancy of Scripture and the Bible's account of creation."
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
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Seminary president says evolution 'incompatible' with Christian faith