I recently read Bill Dembski's "The End of Christianity," which is about theodicy. Dembski's book tries to explain theodicy retroactively and argues that natural evil was caused by human sin. The effect (natural evil) came before the cause (the fall).
A bit of a fracas ensued over the book at Dembski's place of employment, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. A professor there named Tom Nettles wrote a critical review of the book. Some dude named David Allen wrote a response to that review in a white paper, with a foreward by Dembski's boss, Paige Patterson. In attempting to defend Dembski's views, Allen includes a striking retraction by Dembski that shows how deeply the controversy went:
http://www.baptisttheology.org/bapti...ristianity.pdf
Patterson couldn't afford any misunderstanding on these points risking the school's integrity and (probably) angering its patrons. In a meeting that preceded the white paper, Patterson asked for clarification from Dembski. As far as I know, that's the origin of the retraction.
Since then, Dembski has specifically rejected evolution, denying some of the weightiest evidence for it (e.g., hominid fossils and primate DNA).
A bit of a fracas ensued over the book at Dembski's place of employment, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. A professor there named Tom Nettles wrote a critical review of the book. Some dude named David Allen wrote a response to that review in a white paper, with a foreward by Dembski's boss, Paige Patterson. In attempting to defend Dembski's views, Allen includes a striking retraction by Dembski that shows how deeply the controversy went:
(1) As a biblical inerrantist, I accept the full verbal inspiration of the Bible and the conventional authorship of the books of the Bible. Thus, in particular, I accept Mosaic authorship of Genesis (and of the Pentateuch) and reject the Documentary Hypothesis. (2) Even though I introduce in the book a distinction between kairos (God’s time) and chronos (the world’s time), the two are not mutually exclusive. In particular, I accept that the events described in Genesis 1–11 happened in ordinary space-time, and thus that these chapters are as historical as the rest of the Pentateuch. (3) I believe that Adam and Eve were real people, that as the initial pair of humans they were the progenitors of the whole human race, that they were specially created by God, and thus that they were not the result of an evolutionary process from primate or hominid ancestors.
Patterson couldn't afford any misunderstanding on these points risking the school's integrity and (probably) angering its patrons. In a meeting that preceded the white paper, Patterson asked for clarification from Dembski. As far as I know, that's the origin of the retraction.
Since then, Dembski has specifically rejected evolution, denying some of the weightiest evidence for it (e.g., hominid fossils and primate DNA).
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