Why I’m no longer a Theistic Evolutionist (Introduction)

I am very pleased to bring to you a series of posts by a good friend of mine named Chris Lilley.

I met Chris while we were students at Bethel University in Arden Hills, Minnesota. Both of us were students in the Biblical and Theological Studies program, and Chris was a year behind me. I never had a class with Chris, but we had some interactions outside of class, and we had many shared friends.

After I graduated, I ran into Chris one day in the campus coffee shop and found out that he had been accepted to and was planning on attending Princeton Theological Seminary. I expressed some trepidation to him regarding the school and its liberal theology and encouraged him to be cautious and hold fast once he was there.

Over the next several years, while I was attending Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I had some cursory interactions with him on Facebook. Unsurprisingly, he began to embrace theological liberalism and many of the positions that attended that school of thinking.

When he came to mind, I would say a quick prayer that God would direct him back to the Scriptures.

After we both graduated, we began to chat on a more regular basis. He was studying Thomas Aquinas for his doctoral work, and I had begun to fully embrace Confessional Reformed Theology. When he had questions about the currents of predestination present in Aquinas or encountered a sticky question butting up against Reformed doctrines he would reach out to me. I would answer his question, point him to the Scriptures, and pray that God would bring him back to the fold.

Then, things started happening.

Over the next few years, Chris began to ask me more and more questions about the Scriptures and about Reformed theology. Through his studies of Aquinas, he began to accept a doctrine of strict sovereignty. Through his reading of Scripture, he began to be shown the doctrine of God’s unilateral salvation. It wasn’t long before he began to see how those two things collated in the so-called Doctrines of Grace (TULIP). I don’t think that it was any one moment in time, but one day Chris messaged me and said: “I think I’m ready to start calling myself Reformed.”

Slowly at first, and then more rapidly, Chris would tell me how the Scriptures seemed to be a new book to him. It was alive. Rather than standing over it in critical judgment (the hermeneutical method of Princeton Theological Seminary), he began to see that the Scriptures judged him.

That is what brings us to here. About six months ago Chris and I began having conversations about Theistic Evolution. I would tell him that I thought that the Gospel fell apart if Adam wasn’t a historical de novo creation of God. He would tell me he wasn’t sure that was necessary. I would tell him that I thought that Genesis couldn’t support the “ensouled anthropoid” thesis. He would tell me he thought it probably could.

We would talk. I would point him to the Scripture. I would pray. He would pray.

Now, I want to make one thing clear: Although I think that Theistic Evolution does violence to the text of Scripture and that the salvation we have in Christ cannot function the way Scripture describes it if Theistic Evolution is true… There are plenty of Theistic Evolutionists whom I believe to have a genuine saving faith in Christ. I don’t think that believing that Adam was the process of guided evolution and divine ensoulment renders you outside the faith. I just think it is an inconsistency that is yet to be reconciled. In my experience, it is, unfortunately, the case that usually this reconciliation is a rock that shipwrecks someone’s trust in the Bible, and shortly thereafter shipwrecks someone’s faith in the God of the Bible. However, that is not always the case.

That brings us to a new series that I am pleased to publish. I think the title says it all. Over the next several weeks, Chris will be publishing his thoughts on the subject of Theistic Evolution, and why he no longer can hold to that view.