Calvin and Westmont Christian College Professors Leading Charge Against Biblical Authority

BioLogos, an organization dedicated to promoting theistic evolution (or “evolutionary creation”), recently saw the departure of its president Darrel Falk, professor of biology at Point Loma Nazarene University in California. The board of BioLogos published an article announcing the appointment of their new president and their new senior scholar.

Dr. Deborah Haarsma, professor of physics and astronomy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan (a Christian college), has taken on the role of president of BioLogos. And Dr. Jeffrey Schloss, professor of biology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California (also a Christian college), will be the new senior researcher. By the way, Westmont College hosted Peter Enns and his heretical teachings in 2011 for a lecture in which he presented a view of Genesis that included rejecting a literal Adam and a literal Eve:

Now, BioLogos has been trying to convince Christian leaders that evolutionary/millions of years ideas are compatible with Genesis and is encouraging them to teach evolution and millions of years from the pulpit. Dr. Haarsma, in particular, has been actively pursuing this mission, as a codirector of The Ministry Theorem, a Calvin Seminary program that helps pastors “engage” their congregations on evolutionary ideas. The site promotes resources from people who compromise God’s Word in Genesis, such as Francis Collins and William Dembski.

You see, BioLogos has chosen a president who denies the authority of Scripture when it comes to Genesis. Actually, I think it’s helpful to show you what Dr. Haarsma believes in her own words. Just watch the video at the link below. You’ll notice around the 2:44 mark, she explains her view of the history presented in the opening chapters of Genesis.

In a transcript of that section, Haarsma claims that Genesis 1 “is a message of how God interacts with His creation and of our role in creation. It’s several key theological messages. But it is not a message about the how and the when of creation. God didn’t bother to teach the ancient Hebrews that the world was actually round. He didn’t bother to teach them that it was actually atmosphere in the sky instead of a solid sky dome. He let them keep believing that. He accommodated the message to where they were at. And I find that so comforting to us today that God is willing to accommodate His message to our limited understanding. We don’t have to have a perfect scientific understanding of the world to get God’s message for us. And for that reason, I don’t think we need to draw from Genesis 1 a chronology of how God created, a timeline of specific physical events, but rather these very important theological views.”

Did you catch that? Dr. Haarsma believes Genesis “is not a message about the how and the when of creation” and that God “accommodated the message to where they [the Israelites] were at.” So she plainly denies that what Scripture says about creation is true, and she thinks that God isn’t capable of communicating an understandable description of literal history to His people! And really she is saying that God is not telling the truth in that He “accommodates” the message to where they are at (or where she believes they were at from her wrong view of history).

Dr. Schloss also accepts evolutionary ideas wholeheartedly. In a Veritas forum video from 2010, Dr. Schloss explains that we don’t read science or Scripture perfectly, and that if his commitment to evolutionary ideas conflicts with his commitment to what the Bible says … he’d “think hard.” Watch the clip for yourself:

He doesn’t say he would defer to the Word of God, the One who was there and gave us an eyewitness account of history. No, he would “think hard.”

What Haarsma and Schloss are promoting are not evolutionary ideas alone—what they’re doing is helping to promote the blending of Christianity with an atheistic religion, and consequently are undermining the authority of the Word of God! The evolutionary worldview is the secularists’ primary way of explaining the world without God. And two professing Christians employed by two Christian colleges are leaders in the charge against biblical authority in Genesis.

For a review of Dr. Haarsma’s book, Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, & Evolution, written by Reformed scholar Dr. Joe Pipa, see “Reformed View of Origins?”

The mission of Haarsma and Schloss, and BioLogos as a whole, is absolutely destructive to the church. And you know, the church needs to hold people like Haarsma, Schloss, and others who are teaching forms of theistic evolution accountable for their false teachings. I urge you to stand firmly on the authority of God’s Word from the very first verse. I also urge you to learn the Scriptures, so that when your pastors and other church leaders make statements about the Bible, you can investigate those statements for yourself and gently but firmly challenge your leaders to stand on the authority of Scripture as well.

And please be careful where you send your kids to college! For a list of Christian colleges whose presidents have affirmed in writing the Answers in Genesis Statement of Faith, visit CreationColleges.org.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken