Here in my final installment of my look at Hugh Ross’ Rescuing Inerrancy, I’m going to say a few things about his final chapter, and then my reflections of the book overall. If you want to learn more about the creation/evolution debate as a whole, as well as some Church History and proper Biblical Exegesis, purchase the revised edition of my book, The Heresy of Ham.
Chapter 21: A Modest Defense of Biblical Inerrancy
In his final chapter, Ross contrasts the evolutionary model with the biblical creation model. The way he depicts the two models is as follows:
- The evolutionary model: The entire process is naturalistic, without any supernatural input, life came from nonlife, and modern humans evolved from chimpanzees and Neanderthals.
- The creation model: God made life from nonlife, God intervened in the natural process so that life could survive and diversify, and God uniquely created the first human pair, Adam and Eve.
He also pushes against the notion that the ancient Hebrews were just “echoing their neighbors’ mythologies” didn’t have any interest in science. He says that Genesis 1-3, if one is to call it “myth,” “could well be referred to what C.S. Lewis called the one “true myth” (208). With that, Ross says that his “moderate concordist” approach is the preferred way to understand the creation stories in Genesis—not the extreme view of YECism, and not the evolutionary view of groups like BioLogos and some Christian scholars.
And there it is. Ultimately, I was very unimpressed with Rescuing Inerrancy. Back when I wrote almost daily about Ken Ham, AiG and YECism, I never bothered writing anything about Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe for a simple reason: Ken Ham and AiG were openly attacking any Christians who disagreed with them about things like the age of the earth and calling them “compromised Christians.” The fact that I had lost my job at a Christian school because of an overzealous YECist headmaster didn’t help either. My interest was in warning Evangelicals about the divisiveness Ham and AiG were sowing. By contrast, Hugh Ross always seemed like a nice guy. I never saw him attack anyone. I remember watching part of a show on a Christian network where Ham was clearly heated and attacking Ross, and Ross just sat their patiently, took the verbal blows, and tried to articulate his position. I remember thinking, “Talk about ‘turning the other cheek.”
All that is to say, now that I’ve taken the time to read Rescuing Inerrancy, that doesn’t mean Ross is correct in his claim that science and the Bible must “concord.” Whether he realizes it or not, and it pains me to say it in this way, his fundamental outlook on science and the Bible is almost identical to Ken Ham. Both men start with the assumption that the opening chapters in Genesis are historical narrative, and that science supports them to be read that way. And both men assume that saying Genesis 1-11 is “myth” is nothing more than “rejecting Genesis” and calling the reliability of the Bible into question. The only real difference is that Ross interprets “day” in Genesis 1 as “age” or “millions of years,” and Ham positively starts frothing at the mouth at that suggestion.
That being said, the one thing I did appreciate in Ross’ book was how he extensively quoted a number of Christian biblical scholars and theologians as his “foil.” It helped me realize something I probably didn’t realize before—namely, that some scholars do, in fact, muddy the waters and end up probably confusing a lot of Evangelical Christians in the way they approach and talk about Genesis 1-11 and the topic of inerrancy. When a scholar says that the theory of evolution should cause us to reinterpret the creation account in Genesis 1-3 and chuck the notion of biblical inerrancy, for example, that scholar is basically saying, “I’m putting science above Scripture. Genesis 1-3 is WRONG, so bye bye inerrancy! And when Jesus and Paul mention Adam or Noah, well, they were just Jews back then who shared that WRONG VIEW!”…or at least that is what is being conveyed, whether those scholars intend to say that or not.
Given that, is it any wonder why a significant segment of Evangelicals push back on that? (It doesn’t help when certain Christian scholars then also jump into the political/social issue arena and start essentially doing very “Ham-like” things but coming from the other end of the political spectrum. Instead of using the labels “liberals” and “compromised Christians” as bludgeons to attack anyone they disagree with (like Ham does), some on social media attack “Evangelicals” and equate them with “Christian nationalists” (news flash—not all Evangelicals are Christian nationalists).
But even without that more disturbing example, Ross’ book did open my eyes to the fact that scholars, in the way they present and talk about the issues of evolution, the Bible, and Genesis 1-11 in particular, sometimes aren’t as clear as they should be. And some, quite frankly, if they really do think evolution “proves Genesis 1-11 is wrong” and that “Paul was wrong about Adam” because now we have the human genome project, etc., well, they need to rethink a lot of things.
I came to my understanding of Genesis 1-11 back in 1997-1998, long before I ever looked into the creation/evolution debate (circa 2008). I became convinced that Genesis 1-11 was in the genre of ANE myth, completely apart from any scientific concerns. One of the most important starting points in biblical exegesis is determining a passage’s genre—and that will then determine how you go about interpreting that passage. If you get the genre wrong, and “mis-genre” a passage, nothing is going to make sense. There are going to be question marks and holes everywhere in that attempted interpretation. It is like trying to interpret the nightly news as if it were a sitcom. That is why proper genre recognition is so important. Genesis 1-11 has all the earmarks of ANE myth. At the same time, even though it is that genre, what it teaches about God, the created order, and human beings, completely subverts and undermines the ANE pagan worldview that is found in other pagan ANE myths. And that’s the point—Genesis 1-11 is written in the genre that the ANE would be familiar with, but it then dismantles that very ANE worldview. If you miss that, you’re not going to understand Genesis 1-11.
And that’s the basic problem so many people today have today with Genesis 1-11. They assume Genesis 1-11 has to conform or “concord” with our modern scientific findings in order to be true. It is like assuming that the only way Jesus’ “Parable of the Good Samaritan” can be true is for that have to have been a literal good Samaritan who literally helped a literal Jew who got mugged on the road to Jericho. Now, MAYBE Jesus got his idea for that parable because he was told of an actual incident that happened. By the same token, MAYBE there really was a snot-nosed son who gave his rich father the finger, went off and blew his inheritance, and then came crawling back and was welcomed with open arms—MAYBE there really was a prodigal son. But the fact is, there is no way of knowing that, AND THAT ISN’T THE POINT OF THOSE PARABLES. THEY’RE PARABLES, NOT HISTORICAL CLAIMS. Just because they’re not history doesn’t mean they’re not true.
When it comes to Genesis 1-11, I wish more people will come to realize that. In terms of Ross’ book, “inerrancy” doesn’t need to be rescued. First, it needs to be clarified. If you mean “Genesis 1-3 is scientifically accurate or else the Bible’s not true,” then “inerrancy” needs to be jettisoned. If you mean “The Bible is without error in what it teaches about God and His involvement in the world,” then okay…but you’re just being redundant. My advice is to just, you know, go with what the Bible actually says, “All Scripture is inspired and is useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.”
I’m good with that. …and proper genre recognition.
I have similar views to you on inerrancy. I am also not solidly in a creation camp. Not being a science person by education or background, I hold my views loosely, and that allows me to be skeptical about all of them, while accepting what the Bible says without contorting science to bend to my reading of it, and without requiring Scripture to conform to the dictates of science. I do tend toward middle grounds like Reasons to Believe and the Discovery Institute, but I see soft spots everywhere. I would push back on your assessment of Hugh Ross a little bit, though. I first learned about him through his story about how he came to believe in God, and that story colors him differently in my mind from the way you have assessed him. He grew up in a nonreligious household in an area of Vancouver populated by Asians, so he had no contact with Christians or the Bible. He was steeped in science from a young age, reading all the books on science in the local library by the time he was a young teenager. He read the Bible at the age of 17 when the Gideon Society left Bibles at his school. He naturally started at the beginning, in Genesis. He explains in telling the story about how he saw the scientific method in the approach the Bible takes, and he saw the order of how the earth and its atmosphere was formed accurately described in the poetic language of Genesis 1. He didn’t approach Genesis as a believer in God or with any preconceived deference to the text. He let it speak for itself with an open and inquiring mind. I was impressed when I first heard his story, and I given him some benefit of the doubt because of it. He became a Christian only because he saw harmony between the Bible and science.