Ken Ham’s “Gospel Reset: Salvation Made Relevant” (Part 3): America Today and Acts 17 (…and did Ham really say Paul tried to turn Greeks into Jews?)

We now come to Part 3 three of my analysis of Ken Ham’s most recent book, Gospel Reset: Salvation Made Relevant. In his book, he attempts to make the case that the American culture of yesteryear (i.e. 1950s) was much more Christian, and in this respect was much more like the Jewish culture of the first century, particularly that of Acts 2 during Peter’s famous Pentecost sermon. By contrast, the American culture of today is largely secular, and in this respect is much more like the Greek culture of the first century, particularly that of Acts 17 during Paul’s famous Mars Hill sermon.

Now, as I discussed in my previous two posts, Ham’s general claims and analysis are actually true to an extent. I fully agree that America in the 1950’s was certainly more nominally Christian, in so much that people were more familiar with the general Christian story. And it is true that the America of today is certainly more secular in its outlook—attendance in most denominations is dropping. That being said, though, the overall message and supposed “answer” that Ken Ham and AiG is advancing is deeply flawed to say the least.

These posts, therefore, are not so much about AiG’s claims about the science regarding the theory of evolution and the age of the universe, or their specific arguments as to why they believe the early chapters of Genesis are scientific and historical accounts of the literal origins of the world and humanity. These posts rather are looking at Ham’s overall view of today’s culture and his understanding (as described in his book) regarding what the Gospel is all about. In my last post I looked at his equating of the America of the 1950s to the first century Jewish culture in Acts 2. In this post, I will look at his equating of the America of today with the first century Greek culture in Acts 17.

Paul and the Greek Culture in Acts 17
Let me get straight to the point: I found Ham’s analysis of Acts 17 to be, not just bad biblical analysis, but truly bizarre. After noting that many of the Greeks who listened to Paul’s sermon at Mars Hill mocked him, Ham attempted to give a reason as to why they dismissed Paul. Mind you—the text of Acts 17:32 literally says, “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’” And after that we are told the names of a number of Greeks who joined Paul and believed.

Of course, you would not know that if you just listened to Ken Ham. For, despite what the Bible actually says, Ham tells us that the Greeks rejected Paul, “because Greeks had no concept of a Creator God (one God) as the Jews did. They didn’t have the history about Adam and Eve or the Fall of man in the Garden and the entrance of sin and death” (62). That’s right! The Greeks rejected Paul because they didn’t know about the historicity of Adam and Eve! And, quite conveniently, Ham doesn’t mention that there were, in fact, Greeks who believed Paul—Greeks all across the Roman world, actually, all who didn’t know about Adam and Eve. Why? Because that would throw a monkey wrench into his claim that the reason why Greeks didn’t believe Paul was because they didn’t know about Adam and Eve.

Oh, but Ham isn’t done. Not only did the Greek reject Paul because they didn’t hold to the historicity of Adam and Eve, but apparently, they believed in evolution: “Many Greeks held to an evolution-based culture. They believed in a form of naturalism and opposed their fellow Greeks who were polytheistic. Darwin did not invent the concept of evolution—he just re-popularized a particular view of it with a supposed ‘scientific’ justification” (63). Mind you, that is completely false, but who needs to deal with facts? Ham gives the impression, though, that Darwin simply “re-popularized” and original ancient Greek theory of evolution.

So why would Ham claim, in direct contradiction to what Acts 17 actually says, that Greeks didn’t believe Paul because they lived in an evolution-based culture and didn’t know about the historicity of Adam and Eve? That’s easy—he wants to claim that America today is just like the Greek culture back then: believing in evolution and not believing in the historicity of Adam and Eve. Drawing parallels between cultures really is easy to do, especially when you make things up.

America Today—An Acts 17-type Culture
With that fallacious connection in place, Ham then proceeds to tell us more about how America today is just like Greece back then: 90-95% of Christian kids are getting a “Greek” (i.e. secular) education, and churches aren’t teaching kids how to defend their faith (i.e. buy and use AiG material…more on that later). And then Ham pulls out his trump card argument against evolution: “As soon as one believes in millions of years, then you have allowed death, bloodshed, and disease (as exhibited in the fossil record) to exist before Adam sinned” (72). And because evolution teaches millions of years, so says Ham, that is why we have subjective morality and gay marriage.

There is so much wrong with all that, I really don’t know where to begin. Let me just bullet-point my thoughts:

• Ham is assuming that Genesis 1-3 is doing history. But if Adam (which literally means “mankind”) is not meant to be understood as a historical figure; if he represents human beings (which is what many Jews and early Church Fathers thought), then Ham has no argument.
• Ham is also wrongly assuming that God’s creation was originally “perfect.” Nowhere in the Bible does it say that. In fact, the early Church Father Irenaeus clearly wrote that the idea that Adam and Eve were perfect was, in actuality, a heresy, and that the tradition handed down to him from Polycarp, who passed down what he was taught by the apostle John, did not teach creation was perfect—for only God was perfect.
• Therefore, Ham’s basic argument—that there was an original perfect creation, but then when a historical Adam and Eve sinned, that’s what made creation imperfect, full of death, disease, and bloodshed—is simply not biblical, and not in line with some of the earliest teaching of the Church.
• How does Ham go from evolution to subjective morality and gay marriage? He conflates the scientific theory of evolution with philosophical naturalism/atheism, and then claims that if you are convinced of the scientific theory, then you must really be an atheist who has no basis for morality…and that’s how we get gay marriage. Now, gay marriage is a whole other issue—but I think it is safe to say that trying to tie evolution to gay marriage does not make logical sense.

In addition to all that, Ken Ham also lets us know who really is to blame for this moral anarchy in America: Barack Obama. Allow me to let Ham speak for himself: “Do you know who really helped facilitate this change, escalating it in a big way? President Barack Obama.” Ham then draws his readers’ attention to a speech Obama gave in 2006, in which he said,

“Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation and a nation of non-believers.”

Now let’s be clear, this is fairly true. America is a melting-pot of people from around the world, and that means a whole bunch of different religions are represented in America. But Ham didn’t see Obama’s comments that way: “I believe he was actually saying, ‘We are no longer a nation that believes in one God and builds our thinking on the Bible.’ That’s what he wanted to let everyone know, that he was going to fundamentally transform the predominant worldview of our nation from a Christianized one to a secular one” (81).

Now, in full disclosure, I was not a big Obama fan—I had plenty of problems with his presidency. But I do know how to read and understand what I read. Apparently, Ham has a problem with this. No one in their right mind would interpret Obama’s comments in that speech as him declaring his intention to turn America from a Christian nation into a secular one. But Ham doesn’t interpret it that way—this should not be surprising, though, for he also thinks Greeks of Paul’s day were evolutionists who rejected Paul because they didn’t know about Adam and Eve.

…and he thinks Noah had dinosaurs on the ark.

The Problem…and Why Ham Feels We Need a Gospel Reset
Ham ends his book by once again bemoaning the compromise of Christian leaders who are trying to straddle both sides of the widening chasm between non-Christian worldview of evolution (i.e. “the Greek side”) and the Christian worldview (i.e. “the Jewish side”). He writes, “The ‘Greeks’ [i.e. people who believe evolution] are on the wrong road because they have the wrong starting point. This is the battle that began in the Garden 6,000 years ago, a war between God’s Word and man’s word” (99).

Therefore, as far as Ham is concerned, the only way to have a “gospel reset” is to teach Adam and Eve as literal history, so that American non-Christians (i.e. the Greeks) could get familiar with Christian terminology that would make it possible for them to understand the Gospel. We need to “de-Greek” them! Or to put it in Ham’s own words: “Here’s the point: Peter was going to the Jews, but Paul was going to Greeks. That’s the difference. Paul, in a sense, had to turn ‘Greeks’ into ‘Jews’” (103).

That’s right. Despite the fact that nowhere in the New Testament does it ever say Paul’s mission was to turn Greeks into Jews—actually, despite the fact that everywhere in Paul does Paul explicitly condemn any attempt to turn Greeks into Jews!—Ken Ham claims that was his mission: to turn Greeks into Jews, so that they could become Christians. Perhaps Ham should pick up a New Testament and read Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (3:28-29). In the entire letter, Paul is castigating the Gentile believers for starting to give in to some false teachers who were telling them that they had to become Jewish in order to be true Christians. He says that anyone who changed the gospel should be damned.

So no…Paul was not trying to turn Greeks into Jews.

But that doesn’t stop Ken Ham, for he ends the book by literally equating the scientific theory of evolution with demonic teaching: “It’s as if the devil has said, ‘You Christians can go on teaching kids about the miracles Jesus did in the New Testament. You can teach them about the babe in a manger, and the Resurrection. …Go ahead. Teach them these stories. And while you’re doing that, I’m going to be indoctrinating those same kids not to believe the Book. I’m going to use the fake news of evolution and millions of years to brainwash them into believing science has effectively disproved the Bible, making it nothing more than an outdated, obsolete book of ‘stories.’ And since you won’t be teaching apologetics, I will teach my own apologetics through the education systems, media, and the Internet to make sure they doubt God’s Word. The more this happens, most won’t even listen to your message of the gospel” (107).

That’s right: teaching about Jesus and the resurrection isn’t enough, because the devil is teaching children about evolution. Luckily, though, Ham wants you to know that he has the best apologetics curriculum around to combat the wiles of the devil: “Sadly, a lot of Sunday school material today can only be described as ‘fluff and stuff.’ AiG’s ABC Curriculum is very ‘meaty.’ And kids of all ages tell us they love the in-depth teaching” (113). Just buy the AiG ABC curriculum, and the devil will flee.

Conclusion
In all seriousness, I want to reiterate something I said in the first post: Ken Ham is actually correct that America today is less Christian (at least in a nominal sense) than it used to be. He’s right when he says more people today know less about basic Christian beliefs and the Bible than in the past. And he is right that we have a growing secular/atheistic culture, and that the results are some very disturbing trends in American culture today. He is correct when he points out that there is a huge disconnect between churches and the secular culture of today. And he is right when he says, “…we can no longer assume the people we are talking to will understand Christian terminology, or why Christians believe the way they do” (112).

All that is true. In a very real way, there really does need to be a “gospel reset.”

But the answers that Ken Ham and AiG gives are completely wrong. When the early Church was facing threats from the pagan culture of the time, Paul’s answer was not, “Let’s double-down on Jewish practices and make those Greeks more like Jews!” Faced with a growing secular culture and the attempts of atheist propagandists like Richard Dawkins to equate evolution with atheism, the answer is not to let him get away with that, to ignore solid biblical exegesis, to reject valid scientific discoveries, and to instead cling to the outright bizarre, unbiblical claims first put forth by early 20^th century 7^th Day Adventists and popularized by Henry Morris.

I wish I could give an easy answer how to have a real “gospel reset” in America. But the truth is, I can’t, at least not right now. But perhaps a good place to start would be not to misrepresent what the Bible actually says.