Dr Paul Allen

When it comes to secular origin stories, creationism is everywhere. I’m not talking about the origins of life. Evolution remains the favorite answer to that question. But when it comes to the creation of the modern world—our Western, liberal outlook—the denial of evolution is everywhere. Nowadays your average Westerner considers their values, goals, and moral intuitions to have emerged, almost miraculously, from the darkness of ancient religions and superstition. Such convictions have arrived in history, so it’s assumed, fully formed and without dependence on prior beliefs and practices. But a more careful historian—one who pays attention to cultural developments over the centuries—will deny such creationism. In particular, he or she will see the undeniably Christian origins of a secular-liberal worldview. Let me give two examples: modern science and the Enlightenment. Both movements are central to the Western imagination, and both display the unmistakable signs of evolution from a com...

The logo for the BioLogos Foundation (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Christians are accustomed to treating evolution as an account of the world’s origins that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and something that a person could only believe in the absence of God or in the absence of faith. But this is not quite fair. There are now many Christians—Christians who treasure the Bible and who affirm the truths of the historic Christian faith—who do believe that the evidence for evolution is too compelling to ignore. It is telling that, as far as I can see, the vast majority of Christian scientists (not to be confused with Christian Scientists ) hold to evolution. In the face of modern science, those of us who still cling to a literal six day creation may seem to be increasingly stubborn and outdated. Certainly the world perceives us this way. So, too, today, do many in the church. There is very real pressure to conform. The stakes are high. As Christians we believe that God is honored w...

The Creation of Adam (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "Thou, even thou, art LORD alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven worshippeth thee." ( Nehemiah 9:6 ) The Bible clearly states that God created the "heaven, and earth, the sea and all that in them is" ( Exodus 20:11 ) out of nothing. "Things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" ( Hebrews 11:3 ). The first verse of the Bible, " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," could be paraphrased: God called into existence the space--mass--time (i.e., heavens--earth--beginning) universe. Evidently before creation, nothing now intrinsic to the universe existed at all. While this teaching is clear, not hard to understand, it is hard to believe. Such ex nihilo (i.e., out of nothing) creation is so foreig...

Oil painting of a young John Calvin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In this series, we have been discussing Dr. R.C. Sproul's answer to a question about the age of the universe during the Q&A at Ligonier's 2012 National Conference. We have discussed a number of foundational theological issues that reflect Dr. Sproul's distinctively Reformed approach to this issue, an approach based on the thinking of Reformed theologians from John Calvin to B. B. Warfield . In this final post, we turn to Dr. Sproul's answer to the specific question that elicited his lengthy response: When people ask me how old the earth is I tell them "I don't know," because I don't. And I'll tell you why I don't. In the first place, the Bible does not give us a date of creation. Now it gives us hints and inclinations that would indicate in many cases a young earth. And at the same time you get all this expanding universe and all this astronomical dating, and triangula...