Mohler on evolution

The June 13 issue of WORLD Magazine includes an interview with Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Yesterday and today we are running some additional comments for which the print magazine did not have room.

If you were a Republican candidate for president and a reporter demanded to know your position on evolution, how would you respond? A candidate would be well served as a politician to say, “I am serving in a political office. I am not seeking tenure in a university science department. So I will not engage that issue in the way you might expect, other than to say that I am fully supportive of modern science and the modern scientific method, but I also have great respect for the millions of Americans who clearly believe in the divine creation of the world.”

How would you respond as Albert Mohler? I don’t think there is a more fundamental question, because when you look at the worldview of Darwinism, the modern Darwinian synthesis, no worldview is at greater odds with that of Christianity. They are two incompatible worldviews. A lot of evangelicals are looking for some middle ground, theistic evolution or whatever, but you don’t have a gospel without a historical Adam, because Christ Himself is the second Adam and Paul grounds his argument in that. You don’t have common humanity without a common ancestry in Adam.

When materialists attack evangelicals regarding abortion, they look upon us as wrong but not necessarily stupid. On evolution, they see us as both wrong and stupid. Some evangelicals are looking for a way out, but in doing so don’t they leave logic behind? You can’t have the modern Darwinian synthesis and anything like biblical Christianity. The current consensus says there can be no outside influence, no design: It has to be entirely a naturalistic accident. There can’t be a statement at greater odds with it than “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That is a head-on collision.

The BioLogos Foundation is desperately searching for a middle ground and promoting it in lots of churches. Has BioLogos ever invited you to one of its conferences for a debate or discussion? To my knowledge, no. I certainly am not aware of that—although we have engaged each other publicly across the blogosphere. But a recent piece by John Farrell in Forbes was interesting: He criticized me but was honest to say that even evangelicals like those at BioLogos, “which like to promote harmony between science and faith, often blanch at the real challenges genetics and anthropology pose for the interpretation of Scripture.”

What is your greatest concern for the local church these days? Martin Luther famously said the church is where the Word of God is rightly preached and ordinances rightly administered. Then he said it all starts with the first mark of the church, where the Word of God is rightly preached. That is the one thing that must happen, and my greatest fear is that that is the one thing that won’t happen. If you have a Reformation model of the church, which we hope is the New Testament model of the church, then as Paul said to Timothy, whatever you do in season and out of season, one thing you have to do is to preach the Word, and let the Word do its work. Luther explained the Reformation in Wittenberg by saying, I preached and then I went to sleep—and while I slept the Lord did this thing. You have to trust the Lord will do this thing.