Abortion and Gelada Monkeys

One of Canada’s longest running radio shows is CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.  Each Saturday, host Bob MacDonald features a series of clips on different news items from the world of science, medicine and technology.  I’ve been listening to this program on and off since I was a kid.  It’s always interesting – and you can always count on MacDonald to bring in the “E” word:  evolution.  It’s a subversive approach to convincing the Canadian public of this doctrine, as if the sheer repetition of something week in and week out will make it true.

The February 25, 2012 edition of Quirks and Quarks took the evolutionary agenda one step further.  One of the segments was about gelada monkeys.  These baboon-like monkeys live in the highlands of Ethiopia.  They live in a harem structure – with one male gelada monkey heading up a harem of many females.  When a new male monkey takes over a harem, the females that are pregnant typically miscarry.  If they don’t, the new male leader will often kill the infants and newborns.  The theory is that the females miscarry in order to “cut their losses” and start over.  They typically are impregnated by the new male leader in a short period after their “spontaneous abortion.”  Of course, this is regarded as an adaptive strategy, something that has evolved for the advancement of the species.  Monkeys have allegedly evolved with abortion as a way to maintain and improve their kind.

The researcher, Dr. Jacinta Beehner, made it clear that that the female monkeys don’t choose to miscarry.  It’s something that spontaneously happens.  They don’t deliberately cause the loss of the unborn monkey in any way.  Yet, throughout the interview, MacDonald continued to speak about the female monkeys making a choice in the matter.  The expression “cutting their losses” was used repeatedly by MacDonald.  It was pretty hard not to read between the lines.  The Quirks and Quarks website makes it even more clear.  It speaks of female geladas spontaneously aborting their pregnancy, as if they have a choice.  We’re told, “Essentially they are ending investment in offspring in-utero that have no future.”  Hmmm….not too subtle.  Caveat auditor – let the listener beware!

(Originally published in the March 2012 issue of Reformed Perspective)

Book Review: The Theology of B. B. Warfield

The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary, Fred G. Zaspel, Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.  Hardcover, 624 pages, $44.00.

Ninety years after his death, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield continues to be a respected voice in Reformed theology.  Along with Jonathan Edwards, the Hodges, and a few others, Warfield is one of the pre-eminent Reformed theologians in North American church history.  Yet for all his renown, few have given him a careful reading.  Popular ideas persist about what Warfield believed about this or that.  Part of the problem is Warfield himself never systematically laid out his theology in one place.

Fred Zaspel has therefore done us a favour by carefully collating Warfield’s theology into one helpful volume.  After an introduction surveying Warfield’s life and work, Zaspel follows the standard topics of systematic theology and distils Warfield’s thought on each one.  Here and there he also interacts with interpreters, particularly the ones whom Zaspel feels have not done justice to Warfield.

Zaspel himself is a sympathetic interpreter.  A Reformed Baptist pastor in Pennsylvania, he is broadly in agreement with Warfield’s theological bent.  Where he personally might depart from Warfield (regarding infant baptism, for instance), Zaspel remains respectfully silent, just simply laying out the Princeton theologian’s views without comment.  At the end of the volume he does offer some critique, but for the most part he allows Warfield to speak for himself.  That’s not to say the book consists mostly of quotations – most of the time Zaspel summarizes and paraphrases.

The Theology of B. B. Warfield will appeal most to pastors, scholars, seminary students and informed “lay people.”  Like Warfield himself, it is not light and fluffy.  Technical language is used and readers are expected to have an intermediate level of theological knowledge.

There are four areas in the book especially worthy of further comment.  Early on, Zaspel deals with Warfield’s views on apologetics.  He argues that Warfield has been unfairly portrayed by later Reformed apologists such as Cornelius Van Til.  Van Til argued that Warfield did not give adequate expression to the effects of sin upon the unregenerate mind.  Zaspel attempts to defend Warfield against this accusation.  He notes that Warfield did not attribute “right reason” to the unbeliever and spoke repeatedly of the pervasiveness of sin (77-78).  However, Zaspel also states that Warfield maintained that unregenerate man “is able to see the compelling force of ‘right reason.’”  Unfortunately, Zaspel is unable to see that this justifies Van Til’s complaint.  While he adds some useful nuance to Warfield’s views, Zaspel does not succeed in exculpating Warfield on his inconsistencies in apologetics.

Warfield is known as the great defender of biblical inspiration and inerrancy.  Therefore, one would expect a book of this nature to deal with those subjects at length.  Zaspel does not disappoint.  He outlines how contemporaries of Warfield and latter-day interpreters have accused the Princetonian of “rationalistic scholasticism” in his doctrine of the Bible.  He helpfully illustrates how these charges fall well short of the mark.

A third area of interest is Warfield’s thought on evolution.  The claim is often made that Warfield had an appreciation for evolution.  The argument is advanced that if Warfield can be regarded as a great Reformed theologian and he held to evolution, then how can contemporary advocates of evolution be excluded from Reformed churches?  Those making such claims ought to read Zaspel’s careful summary of Warfield’s views and how they developed.  He concludes Warfield could at best be said to have been noncommittal or to be critically agnostic (386-387).  However, Warfield also developed a “strengthening conviction against evolution” (385).

Finally, one of Warfield’s greatest concerns was the influence of perfectionism or Keswick “higher life” spirituality.  In his day there were popular preachers and writers claiming it was possible for Christians to no longer sin in this age.  There were also those who claimed that Christians should not regard themselves as sinners, since they are a “new creation in Christ.”  They denied the biblical teaching that, in this age, we are both justified and sinners (simul iustus et peccator).  These false teachings are still around today.  Today we still need Warfield’s biblical defense against these errors.  Zaspel provides a helpful door.  Warfield approvingly quoted Thomas Adam, “The moment we think we have no sin, we shall desert Christ” (465).

The Theology of B. B. Warfield is a comprehensive guide to the thought of “the Lion of Princeton.”  There’s no question it will be a standard reference for decades to come.  Anyone interested in the development of Reformed theology on our continent needs to have it and read it.

Book Review: Foundations

Foundations: Sermons on Genesis 1-3, Peter H. Holtvlüwer, Tintern: Little Angels Press, 2010.  Paperback, 163 pages, $15.00.

Attacks on the truths of God’s Word never stop.  This is also obviously true for the first three chapters of the Bible.  Outside the church there are voices that outrightly deny what the Bible says about our creation and fall.  Sadly, even inside the church there are voices that weaken what Scripture says about these things by denying their historicity.  We can be thankful to God for faithful preachers of the Word like Peter Holtvlüwer, minister of the Spring Creek Canadian Reformed Church in Tintern, Ontario.

This book contains a series of sermons he preached to his previous congregation in Carman, Manitoba.  There are 13 sermons and they cover almost every verse of Genesis 1-3.  The sermons retain the style of sermons and they include the sort of references that one might expect from a pastor addressing a rural congregation.

There are three reasons why I’m going to recommend this book to you.  First, the author takes the biblical text seriously as a record of historical events.  There is no capitulation here to Darwinism, theistic evolution, or anything of the sort.  Second, Holtvlüwer constantly brings everything to a focus on Jesus Christ.  These sermons are Christ-centered and therefore edifying and God-glorifying.  Third, Foundations features clearly written prose.  The author explains Scripture in a direct and easy-to-understand fashion.

Preachers who review other preachers’ sermons are in an awkward position.  We all have our own ideas of what should be left in a sermon and what should be left out.  In this instance, too, there are some things that I would have liked to seen included.  As an example, especially in the light of some current discussions with our URC brothers, it would be good to see a reason why Holtvlüwer regards the covenant in Genesis 3 as a renewal of the covenant from Genesis 2.  He appears to assume that this is an obvious fact.  Or in chapter 12, he writes that “we often must learn to forgive ourselves too.”  Where does Scripture teach that?  Again, this seems to be assumed rather than established.

Overall, this is a valuable contribution to our Reformed community.  Holtvlüwer’s book could be used in public worship for reading sermons – song selections, etc. are included in an appendix.  It could also be used with profit for personal devotional reading.  Moreover, the author has generously decided to use all the proceeds for this book to support a worthy cause in Brazil.  The Reformed Reading Room in Recife is part of Canadian Reformed mission efforts in north-eastern Brazil.  God has used it in a fantastic way for the spread of the biblical gospel.  Your purchase of this book will contribute to the ongoing dissemination of the good news of Jesus Christ.  Ordering information can be found online at:  http://www.sermonsongenesis123.com .

Science Is Not Neutral

The other day I posted my review of Alister McGrath’s The Passionate Intellect.  One thing I didn’t mention in this review was this paragraph:

When properly and legitimately applied, the scientific method is religiously neutral — neither supportive nor critical of religious beliefs.  This means that scientific atheists have to spin science in certain ways in order to maintain their core dogma that science disproves religion.  And since the scientific method clearly does not entail atheism, those who wish to use science in defense of atheism are obliged to smuggle in a series of non-empirical metaphysical ideas to their accounts of science and hope that nobody notices this intellectual sleight of hand.  (111)

McGrath goes on to describe how Dawkins “represents genes as active agents, in control of their own destiny and ours” (112).  Much of what Dawkins writes about this is metaphysical speculation.

I think the key qualification in McGrath’s assertion is “properly and legitimately applied.”  What does that mean?  McGrath doesn’t say.  Nor does he go into the effects of sin on the human mind in applying and interpreting the scientific method.

I thought about this further as I was reading the November issue of The Atlantic yesterday on my flight back from BC.  There’s an article by David H. Freedman, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.”  It’s about Dr. John Ioannidis and his studies regarding medical research.  Medical research, it turns out, is rather fickle.  And some of that can be traced back to human failings in the scientific process.  Freedman writes:

We think of the scientific process as being objective, rigorous, and even ruthless in separating out what is true from what we merely wish to be true, but in fact it’s easy to manipulate results, even unintentionally or unconsciously.  “At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,” says Ioannidis.  “There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.”

This is somewhat different than what McGrath was speaking about.  The smuggling in of metaphysical assumptions is different than manipulating the scientific process, but the two are not unconnected.  In fact, metaphysical presuppositions can lead one to consciously or unconsciously manipulate data at various stages of the process — from the way a question is posed through to the way the answers are interpreted.

Ioannidis published a paper with a detailed mathematical proof demonstrating that “researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time.”  So much for scientific objectivity or neutrality.  Freedman describes this further:

Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right.  His model predicted, in different fields of medical research, rates of wrongness roughly corresponding to the observed rates at which findings were later convincingly refuted: 80 percent of non-randomized studies (by far the most common type) turn out to be wrong, as do 25 percent of supposedly gold-standard randomized trials, and as much as 10 percent of the platinum-standard large randomized trials.  The article spelled out his belief that researchers were frequently manipulating data analyses, chasing career-advancing findings rather than good science, and even using the peer-review process — in which journals ask researchers to help decide which studies to publish — to suppress opposing views.

Now all of that is in reference to what we call “operational science,” regarding scientific observations and research in a world that can be tested and observed in the here and now.  Imagine then what happens in the realm of origins science, or historical science.  If scientists can often be wrong in what they can observe now, how much more so when they theorize about what happened eons ago?  The effects of sin on the human mind and on science should never be discounted or minimized.  Even the best science is done by sinners.  There is only one absolutely reliable source of public, objective truth.  Dr. John Byl has more to say about all this.

Book Review: The Passionate Intellect

The Passionate Intellect: Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the  Mind, Alister McGrath, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2010.  Hardcover, 210 pages, $24.50

Back in the mid-1990s, I reviewed a book which began with the memorable words:  “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”  If you don’t recognize them, they’re from Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.  In the years since, many authors have echoed Noll’s lament.  Others have sought to remedy the situation.  The Passionate Intellect can be considered another attempt at rectifying the intellectual laziness of many Christians today.  The author’s purpose is to do this with an eye to engaging challenges to the Christian faith in the public square.

McGrath is the author of many books and articles.  He speaks widely at conferences around the world.  Trained in molecular biophysics, chemistry, and theology, he’s currently the chair of theology, ministry and education of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture at King’s College, London, England.  He is also the head of that institution.  McGrath has served as an assistant pastor in an Anglican church and his wife is also an ordained Anglican minister.

The Passionate Intellect is based on previously unpublished lectures and addresses on the subjects of theology, apologetics, and cultural engagement.  The first part of the book deals with “The Purpose, Place and Relevance of Christian Theology.”  This is the better part of the book.  One of the highlights is chapter 4, exploring the connections between Martin Luther and C. S. Lewis with regards to suffering and a “theology of the cross.”  There are differences, but also some commonalities: “For all their differences, Lewis and Luther both believed that we dwell in a world of shadows, which will one day give way to the brilliance and clarity of heaven” (68).  Both Luther and Lewis came to understand that the best theologians are forged in the furnace of suffering and hard experiences.  If you were to buy this book, pay the most careful attention to this chapter.

The second part is titled, “Engaging With Our Culture,” and this section is more outwardly focussed and relates to apologetics.  Here too, McGrath has some helpful and engaging points.  For instance, I appreciated his critique of several aspects of the new atheism of Hitchens, Dawkins, etc.  He describes his own personal journey to the discovery that atheism is a belief system rather than “a factual statement about reality” (106).  He notes, “The new atheism conducts its polemic against a notion of God that bears little relation to that of Christianity” (111).  He takes on Dawkins’ theory that “belief in God is a delusion caused by ‘memes.’”  He identifies this theory as entirely based on speculation (115-118).  Also, throughout the volume, McGrath correctly notes how Christianity offers the most “comprehensive, coherent, and compelling account of reality” of all worldviews and belief systems.

Yet I have some reservations that prevent a whole-hearted recommendation.  First off, McGrath does not see Darwin’s evolutionary theory as being inconsistent with Christian belief.  In a recent Clarion article with some colleagues, we argued quite the opposite.  One cannot hold to Darwinian evolution and have a high view of Scripture.  The two are mutually exclusive.

That brings me to a second reservation:  how does McGrath view the relationship of Scripture to apologetics?  It’s not clear to me from this book and that makes me uncomfortable.  This is not to say that he ignores Scripture or biblical teachings.  Rather, my reservation is with the fact that he does not come right out and say that the Bible must be the foundation for faithful Christian apologetics.  Perhaps this is why we don’t hear anything from McGrath on the effects of sin on the human mind and reasoning and even imagination.

Finally, in chapter 10, McGrath portrays Jesus Christ as the ultimate pacifist: “He was the object, not the agent, of violence.”  Wasn’t whipping money-changers out of the temple a bit on the violent side?  Doesn’t he reveal himself in Revelation 19 as the rider on the white horse “who judges and makes war”?  Revelation 19:15, “Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations…He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” McGrath asks, “Does the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ command anyone to kill in his name?” (156).  Um…yes.  Unless he is a Marcionite, McGrath should have Exodus 12 in his Bible.  The LORD sends his angel to kill all the first-born of Egypt.  There are other examples.

McGrath is at his best when dealing with Lewis and Luther.  If the whole book was along the lines of chapter 4, I would be pleased to recommend it.  Unfortunately, McGrath falls into a similar pit as Noll did in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.  He sees the problems rightly, but his solutions are often lacking.  The “passionate intellect” must be informed by Christian presuppositions firmly grounded only in the Word of God.