Ken Ham’s Accusation that Peter Enns is a Heretic: An Ironic Condemnation of Himself

Yesterday, I wrote about the response Troy Lacey of AiG gave to the question, “Can someone promote heresy and yet not be a heretic?” This question had been asked because someone was confused by Ken Ham’s criticism of Peter Enns, where he accused Enns of spouting heresy, but then turned around and said, “I’m not calling him a heretic.” Lacey never bothered even defining what “heresy” actually was, and instead responded by basically lifting three biblical passages from their context and falsely claiming they were about heresy. His conclusion was, “Yes, one can spout heresy but not be a heretic…look at Peter, look at Apollos, look at the people Elijah complained about.”

My conclusion about Lacey’s response was simple: it was irresponsible and careless.

Peter Enns Continues to Promote Heresy!
In this post, though, I want to take a look at the April 20, 2013 post by Ken Ham about Peter Enns that originally initiated the question about heresy. The title leaves little to the imagination: “Enns Continues to Promote Heresy—Sponsored by Baptist Church.” And in the very first paragraph, Ham pulls no punches:

“Theologian Peter Enns rejects a literal Adam and literal Eve and a literal Fall. Thus he has destroyed the foundation of the gospel. Peter Enns also does not believe the book of Romans deals with the gospel or that God through Paul refers to a literal Adam back in Genesis.”

Now, the first sentence is actually correct: Enns doesn’t believe in a literal Adam and Eve, and therefore he doesn’t believe that a literal Adam and Eve ate a literal piece of fruit and literally “fell” from a state of perfection. I, for one, am in agreement with Enns on this point…and so are a number of early Church Fathers like Origen and Irenaeus to name just two.

Therefore, when Ham concludes that therefore Enns “has destroyed the foundation of the gospel,” this becomes quite problematic—how can Enns be destroying the foundation of the gospel when the historical witness of the early Church demonstrates that not only did the early Church not teach that belief in a literal Adam and Eve was “the foundation of the gospel,” but that many of them didn’t believe in a literal Adam and Eve and “fall from perfection” themselves?

Secondly, it is beyond shocking that Ham would accuse Enns of not believing the book of Romans deals with the gospel. It is one of those statements that simply defies logic. Of course Romans deals with the gospel; of course Enns believes Romans deals with the gospel. He just doesn’t believe Paul is making a historical argument that Adam was a literal person. Enns argues that whether or not Paul believed that Adam was a literal person of history is pretty much irrelevant to the theological point he was making in Romans 5. Somehow, though, Ham interprets this to mean Enns doesn’t believe Romans is about the gospel. Again, that simply makes no sense.

In any case, this condemnation at the beginning of Ham’s post stemmed from the clear fact that Ham was infuriated that he got banned from a homeschool convention because he had publicly attacked and condemned Enns, who was at the same homeschool convention, promoting his own curriculum. That homeschool convention dropped Ham, but retained Enns. What is a guy like Ham to do? The answer is easy: write equally nasty blog posts and ramp up his attacks on Peter Enns…

…and anyone who associates with Peter Enns.

Beware of Scholarship! It Undermines God’s Word!
In the case of Ham’s post, that “anyone” was Pastor Rodney Kennedy of First Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio. Kennedy’s church was hosting a convention, and Enns was the keynote speaker. Kennedy had said the conference was aimed at offering other explanations than six-day creationism. He clearly stated that science has shown the universe is 14 billion years old, and that the Bible did not refute the big bang theory. He wanted to strengthen the faith of believers by showing them that there were alternatives to young earth creationism.

After pointing out that he had found the following statement on the church’s website, “We study the Bible along with the gift of critical scholarship through the ages. Literalist interpretations are left to others,” Ham wrote, “So it‘s not surprising at all this church is sponsoring this conference that undermines the authority of God’s Word and the gospel.”

If that is not a blatant rejection of education and scholarship, I don’t know what is. With that one statement, Ken Ham makes it clear that he opposes informed scholarship of the Bible and that he equates informed scholarship with undermining that authority of God’s Word and the gospel. This rejection of scholarship reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity: “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.”

One of the things that has always enamored me to Christianity, beginning with the first time I read Mere Christianity in high school, was not only how intellectually challenging it was, but also how fearless it was. I didn’t have to fear challenging myself intellectually; I didn’t have to fear reading about other religions; I didn’t have to fear asking tough questions, because I could take Jesus Christ at his word, “If you seek me, you will find me.”

Yet, sadly, when it comes to the likes of Ken Ham, all I see is distrust of education and critical scholarship and fear…of everything.

And No Ham Post Would Be Complete Without “It’s Not a Salvation Issue, but…”
In any case, Ham then insists that a historical reading of Genesis 1-11 isn’t a salvation issue, but it is a gospel issue. As I’ve said before in other posts, this is just pure double-speak, for the gospel is about salvation. Instead of dwelling on this, though, Ham makes the odd claim that if evolution were true, then that would be blaming God for death and evil (i.e. animal and plant death would have been happening before human beings existed), instead of blaming our sin on Adam.

Responding to this could take a book, but let me just offer these two observations. First, let’s get even more “biblically literal” than Ham, and let’s note that the Bible does not say that animal and plant death are the result of Adam’s sin. Read through Genesis 2-3—it’s just not there. It says (A) Adam will die because of his sin, (B) his toil of the ground would be frustrated by thorns and thistles. Therefore, to be clear, the Bible doesn’t say thorns and thistles came into existence because of Adam’s sin.

Second, I can’t help but notice Ham thinks it’s legitimate to blame his own sin on a figure in the past. In a sense, he’s doing the very thing Adam in Genesis 3 is doing—blaming someone else for his own sin. The point of Genesis 3 isn’t to give us someone to blame our own sin on; the point is to declare that we are Adam and Eve. The story of Genesis 3 is the story of each one of us—that’s what we do, and that’s why we need salvation.

Simply put, Genesis 3 highlights human beings’ natural state and the obvious fact that we sin. So yes, understanding Genesis 3 is important to salvation, in that it lays out and explains the human condition, and it also emphasizes God’s commitment to redeem and work through human beings (who are made in His image) to ultimately defeat death and transform His creation.

It simply isn’t giving historical information.

And speaking of “historical,” then there is “Historical Science”
And then there is Ham’s obsession with “historical science.” He takes issue with Peter Enns comment in an article that he wondered if Ham “made up” the term “historical science.” Ham was clearly upset by this, and went out of his way to say that “even Enns’ friends at the compromising BioLogos organization” acknowledges “historical science,” even posting a link to a BioLogos article on it (we’ll just leave Ham’s snarky “compromising” accusation alone).

Surprisingly to me, yes, there was an article by Deborah Haarsma in which she discussed “historical science.” What should not be surprising, though, is that her definition of “historical science” (i.e. we can come to a fuller understanding of the past of the natural world by projecting back the constant natural laws we observe today), bore little to no resemblance to Ham’s definition of “historical science” (i.e. beliefs about the past that cannot be tested, repeated, or observed, and therefore need to be taken on faith, based on the assumption that Genesis 1-11 is God’s eyewitness testimony about how He created everything 6,000 years ago).

So sure, one could say Enns was careless a bit in his comment about never having heard the term “historical science” before, but at the same time, one has to concur with Enns on this point: when it comes to Ham’s definition of “historical science,” yes, he pretty much made it up.

Ham’s Conclusion
The title of Ham’s post claimed that Enns was promoting heresy. In his conclusion, Ham comes back to that charge, and states,

“Enns’s treatment of Scripture related to biblical creation is appalling—in fact, it is heretical. Once you reject a literal Fall of man, then your teaching is heretical. Now, let me be clear: I am not calling Dr. Enns a heretic. But he has a very low view of the Word of God and some of his beliefs are certainly not a part of orthodox Christianity and thus are heresy.”

So to be clear, according to Ken Ham it is “heretical” to reject a literal “fall of man” (which he means belief that there were two historical people who had a perfect genome, but who “fell” from that state of biological and spiritual “perfection” when they ate a literal piece of fruit). To reject that belief is (A) to have a very low view of the Word of God, and (B) to not be a part of orthodox Christianity.

Ham is simply wrong on both counts. First, the witness of the early Church clearly shows Ham’s view of Genesis 3 wasn’t the view of early Church. They didn’t view Adam and Eve as “perfect,” and they certainly had no concept of a “perfect genome.” They viewed Adam and Eve as naïve and childlike. Therefore, it is hard to believe that the early Church, the people who preserved and eventually formed the biblical canon of Scripture, somehow “had a very low view of God’s Word,” simply because they didn’t have the view of Genesis 3 that Ken Ham does today.

Secondly, and this flows from the previous point, since this was that testimony of the early Church, it is blatantly obvious that belief in a “perfect” couple and a literal “fall from perfection” wasn’t the traditional, orthodox Christian belief concerning Genesis 3. Thus, Enns’ view of Genesis 3 is actually more in line with the early Church and traditional Christianity than Ham’s view.

And thus, in a stunning instance of irony, Ham’s attempt to accuse Enns of heresy by appealing to the history of traditional, orthodox Christianity actually proves Ken Ham himself to “not be a part of orthodox Christianity.”

There is one more article that further illustrates AiG’s obsession with Peter Enns and their misuse of the term “heresy,” but that must wait for another day.