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Book review: The Scandal of the Evangelical MindBefore this book came into my hands, I had already seen extracts indicative of its profound hostility towards creationism. I had heard, not without dismay, that it carried endorsements by such as J.I. Packer and, of all people, Francis Schaeffer’s protege, Os Guiness. Reading it certainly confirmed that dismay, but this book cannot be simply dismissed as one more anti-creationist tirade. There is in fact a great deal in it which Christian thinkers need to digest, in spite of its tragically wrongheaded approach to the authority of Scripture. To call evangelicalism back to its heritage of intellectual rigour, to worshipping God with the ‘whole man’, heart and mind, is certainly commendable as such. The ‘scandal’ to which Noll refers is that ‘there is not much of an evangelical mind’ (in the corporate sense, and not referring to evangelical theology per se). As the jacket blurb points out, evangelical protestantism, the largest and most active religious group in America, makes
Which of us would not deplore, along with Henry Blamires (as approvingly quoted by Noll on p. 5), the way in which
Ironically, reading the book makes it clear that this is the very problem which afflicts Noll and his colleagues. In spite of his lack of depth in the philosophy of science and epistemology, Noll is clearly a gifted historian and writer. His expert tracing of the historical background to much of modern American evangelical thought is both instructive and enjoyable. Nevertheless, the book is fatally marred by the author’s prejudices in the area of origins and science, an issue he acknowledges as crucial by devoting so much space to it. McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, Noll has dedicated his book to his colleagues at Wheaton, well known for their theistic evolutionist/progressive creationist antipathy to those who take Genesis as meaningful history. He spends much more time attacking creationism than he does on his other chief bogeyman, the ‘prophecy movement’ (for want of a better term).1 He presents the idea of global Flood and recent Creation in six days as being some sort of quasi-heretical invention this century, traceable to the Adventist writer Ellen White,2 but is substantially misleading in this. The modern movement is not an invention of creationism, but its revival. The evangelical flirtation in the latter part of last century with ideas such as local flood, gap theories, day-age ideas and the like did not have its basis in exegesis. Rather, it arose in an attempt to ‘harmonise’ Genesis with the increasingly popular ideas of those such as Hutton and Lyell who were advocating a great age for the earth. Prior to that, evangelical commentaries, for hundreds of years, had no difficulty understanding, in agreement with modern creationists, the overwhelmingly obvious meaning of Genesis. [Ed. note: This is well documented in Doug Kelly’s book Creation and Change, published after Dr Wieland’s review.] Noll’s emotional involvement in the issue often surfaces from beneath a thin veneer of scholarly objectivity. His assessments are occasionally so far over the top as to border on the bizarre. For example, he claims (p. 14) that creationism rests on a
Even his own colleague at Wheaton, biologist Pattle Pun, has admitted that there would be no doubt that the creationists were right about the fact that Genesis obviously teaches a straightforward creation of everything, recently, in six ordinary days, followed by a world Flood ‘were it not for the hermeneutical considerations of science’.3 We see here, as in so many of the ‘evangelical’ books attacking creationism, that discussions of biblical interpretation are really a smokescreen. The real issue is one of authority—the words of God or the praises of men. As Dr Aw Swee Eng (formerly biochemistry professor at Singapore University) said to me recently, the reason why creation science ministries arouse so much hostility from those who have compromised on these crucial, foundational issues in their own thinking is because our very existence ‘is a rebuke to their compromise’. So Noll really puts the boot in, in no uncertain terms. Not only are the creationists, in his view, the most visible symptom of the problem, it is clear that he regards them (us) as the main ‘scandal’ for Christendom. Those who have been influenced by them are described as ‘enslaved to the cruder spirits of populist science’ and as ‘bereft of self-criticism, intellectual subtlety, or an awareness of complexity’. The author of Scandal does not grapple with creationist arguments—he treats them with an aloof disdain, as if everyone with a neurone in their skull would know that, by definition, such a position must be wrong. He is happy to acknowledge members of the generally theistic evolutionist American Scientific Affiliation as ‘careful Christian thinkers’,4 whereas on the same page (p. 197) the creationists are smeared with prejudicial reference to their alleged ‘noisy’ approach. Anyone involved with our ministry will have experienced some of the immense rage of the evolutionist establishment as expressed in some very savage distortions, even public ad hominem attacks based on demonstrated fabrication. It is therefore a very bitter pill that Noll is asking us to swallow when he blames creationists for pushing the religion-science issue ‘to the brink of warfare’. Further, there is the issue of intellectual honesty. Noll says that if the consensus of modem scientists is
Note the breathtaking arrogance. It doesn’t appear to matter what the Bible text actually says—if it disagrees with the majority view of fallen humanity, it cannot be said to be teaching that. A more honest position would be to admit that, if the Bible were to teach something that is completely at odds with actual fact, then it has in effect been falsified. Instead, it seems, we should engage in an emperor’s clothes charade, pretending it does not teach what it so clearly does. One can wholeheartedly concur with Os Guiness5 as quoted in the Noll book (p. 23) that
That is in fact what our ministry is all about—one can only think Christianly if that is based on biblical foundations. Evangelicalism will only regain its intellectual vigour when it puts its philosophical house in order. First, it needs to withdraw its support en masse from the Christian institutions which have sat back complacently and allowed their own faculty members to work at denying the foundations of the Gospel message, by teaching such things as death/bloodshed before sin, no global Flood judgment, etc. Such institutions have, in effect, been pulling the intellectual teeth from Christianity by setting Christian thought onto pathways which have shown, over and over, to lead only in one direction. Whether in the history of Christian educational institutions, or even whole denominations, the ‘cracks’ of compromise in the Genesis foundations of doctrine have led to an increasingly liberal understanding of the rest of the Bible, and ultimately, via mysticism, to naturalism.6 Those concerned about the absence of Christian intellectualism should actually welcome the modern creationist movement (while not necessarily embracing all of its adherents) for grappling head-on with the most significant intellectual challenges to Christianity. In particular, they should welcome the increasing signs that there is a growing breadth and maturity to the movement, precisely in those areas of science related to the crucial issues of catastrophic geology and the age/dating question. If that handful of scientists and intellectuals Currently engaged in the task of building a sound creation model on solid biblical foundations were to be supported en masse by the evangelical community (this in itself would greatly swell their numbers), there could indeed be a basis for a true Christian cultural revival, encompassing all areas of human thought and endeavour. Somehow, I don’t think Mark Noll would be pleased. Footnotes
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