On the traditional reading of the Genesis account up until Darwin, God miraculously brought the universe into being through immediate divine action. In all its astonishing diversity, the universe emerged by divine fiat. Charles Darwin would end up toppling that old picture in one fell swoop. Not singlehandedly, of course—he had intellectual forebears and was…

Dear Darrel, Thanks for reading my book The Quest: Exploring Creation’s Hardest Problems and taking time to write to me. I’m very grateful for your friendship, and I’m thankful you wanted to read and respond to the book. To be honest, much of the book has been shaped by our relationship. Our time together has…

I’m thankful for the opportunity to participate in this series about the Cabal and Rasor book, Controversy of the Ages. I agreed to the assignment having had no previous knowledge of the book. But I had met Ted Cabal at one of the private meetings with BioLogos, Reasons to Believe, and Southern Baptist seminary professors…

Dennis and I were both honored and wary that the Creation Project would take on our book for a wider public discussion, honored because they chose our book and wary because it was a five-to-two ratio of reviews to responses and because we know that many in the evangelical community will agree with neither Dennis…

I am grateful that our book, Adam and the Genome, was selected by the Creation Project for this discussion. This is a timely issue for the church that affects both our witness to those outside our communities whom we long to reach with the gospel, and for those among us who have come to accept…

At the heart of the Christian faith is the idea that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. To be clear: this idea runs counter to human experience and is thoroughly “anti-scientific.” Over 100,000 years of human experience teaches that when people die, they remain dead. And this experience is borne out by centuries of…

In the age of genomes, new information is reshaping our understanding of life on Earth. This information cannot be ignored, and questions are rising in the Church. How much does evolution press on theology? Was Adam a real person from whom all mankind descends? In Adam and the Genome, the scientist Dennis Venema explains our…

Adam and the Genome reviews selected highlights in the scholarly discussion about human evolution and Scripture. In what follows I focus on Venema’s approach to arguing support for evolution, and McKnight’s claims about a literary vs. historical Adam. Challenges with Venema’s Method The first chapter emphasizes predictive power and independent lines of evidence as strategies for…

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga argued in his book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, religion, and naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2011), the central thesis: “There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism.” Now, Plantinga wrote about “theistic religion,” but his main…

American evangelicals have come a long way. Since the last century, they have tried to bear witness to their Savior in an increasingly post-Christian culture. Distancing themselves from the abrasive and isolationist style of early fundamentalism, and embarrassed by the anti-intellectualism of that heritage, scholars at institutions like Wheaton, Trinity, and Fuller were gradually able…