For many years, Christians have been aware of the way theological Liberals have presented their views: `We are 20th Century Christians, and have grown up to maturity. The old ideas about sin, judgment, atonement and hell are outdated and must be abandoned - the Christianity we present has come of age'. These ideas are less popular now among the general population: they do not change lives, they have no authority, and they do not provide a firm foundation on which to build. Nevertheless, among religious intellectuals, liberalism's influence is still very strong. The pressures to accommodate to accepted norms are very great. This article is based on a recent example of the way modern knowledge is used to reinterpret the teaching of the Bible.

In the 27th March 1992 issue of the Church Times, Bishop Hugh Montefiore discussed the topic of `Creation Theology'.

`Traditional Christianity (but not scripture as a whole) has understood the world as having lost its original perfection through the fall of angels and the sin of Adam. So God took action to put right what had gone wrong, and through Christ's redemption he set it again on its proper course. How does this stand in the light of modern knowledge? There may have been an original man (or woman), but what of the entail of Original Sin? We certainly suffer from a condition which makes us all prone to sin; but this seems to be derived from our animal past and from the self-concern an infant needs for survival. If there was a Fall, it was a "Fall upwards", with moral choice and greater knowledge giving the possibility not only of evil but also of heightened responsibility and increased power for good. Redemption, in the sense of regaining what has been lost, is no longer credible.'

The modern knowledge of which Montefiore speaks concerns our understanding of origins: Twentieth Century man knows that all living things have evolved from simpler ancestral populations. This means, in his thinking, that death has always been with mankind (and is not a punishment for disobedience), that the apparently selfish struggle for survival is normal (so that what we call `sin' is really derived from our animal past), and that our capacity for moral choice and self-conscious thought is a step up from our ancestors (so that, if the Fall occurred, it must have been upwards). For at least these reasons, say the Modernists, the Theory of Evolution has made the traditional teachings of the Bible incredible.

Christians have divided on their response to this challenge. Some argue that it is possible to believe the Bible and accept the Theory of Evolution. They say that the two areas of belief are complementary and not contradictory. Other Christians have concluded that there are real contradictions - because both the Bible and evolutionary theories are concerned with the history of life on Earth and the two histories are irreconcilable. They conclude that the evolutionary explanation must be false; God's revelation is true.

One of the concerns of the Biblical Creation Society is that the dominance of theistic evolutionary teaching in our country is weakening the doctrinal roots of many evangelical Christians. Foundational truths, such as the Fall and redemption, are attacked by evolutionary ideas, and compromise positions have often prevailed. In an article in The Banner of Truth(July 1992), the editor, Maurice Roberts, addresses the way evolutionary thinking has downgraded understanding of the exceeding heinousness of sin. Using examples from the beginning of this Century, Roberts comments:

`Now there is a justice and a holiness in God's glorious nature which could not let these theological weaknesses pass unnoticed and unexposed. The whole tendency of the theory of man's "ascent" was to cut the doctrine of sin as it is stated in Scripture.'

These issues must be faced! `A tree is known by its fruit'The Bible(Matthew, chapter 12, verse 33).

David J. Tyler (1992) )

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