For much of my life as an educator I followed the Biblical Creation debates with interest and touched on them myself several times during my Master’s and PhD degree programs and in my role as a church leader and Sunday School teacher. However, as I approached my 2nd retirement in 2017 I largely checked out of following the discussions because my attention was directed toward my retirement plans. I have only recently been drawn back into the discussion because of some questions directed my way (see my last blog post here).

About the time I stopped paying attention, there was a book published that I only recently found and read. Published in 2017, it is essentially a book-form debate between four well-known proponents of very different views and approaches to this topic.

I think I’d like to write a couple of blog posts as a sort of book review/critique. I won’t begin fully examining it in this post, but I do have the following comments about it by way of introduction:

• The four participants (plus the editor) are all associated with 4 major Christian organizations that delve into this arena: Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis), Hugh Ross (Reasons to Believe), Deborah Haarsma (BioLogos), and Stephen Meyer (Discovery Institute). They present their four cases for Creation/Evolution topics revolving around age of the earth, life origins, life development over time, Noah’s flood, and God’s work throughout Earth and space history.
• The format of the book goes like this: Each chapter is a ~10,000 word essay from that person/organization (each heavily footnoted so they can get more words in and further develop some of their points). Then each of the other three contributors got to write a ~2,000 word response to the essay. Then the original writer got ~1,000 words to offer a rebuttal to the commentary. The editor opens and closes the book with his own general comments about the process.
• The instructions (which were followed fairly well) were to write a summary of their positions on origins and how it relates to their understanding of the Bible. They were also asked to identify their own perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of their positions. They were also invited to comment on how their positions can be used to introduce people to the Christian faith.
• I found all four essays to be very good – even the ones from the people I really don’t agree with. I also found the commentary and rebuttals to be good. There was not nearly as much name-calling as I might have expected, nor even statements like “if you don’t believe what I’m saying, you obviously don’t believe the Bible.” There was a little of that, but not too much.
• The essays are not always the easiest reading because of getting into the weeds a little to make their points, but all in all they are very good.
• For the most part, the four individuals emphasized that their motivation in pursuing this debate is to further invite seekers into the faith and to share the gospel. The editor commented at the end that he was hoping for a little more Christian unity to be displayed, but I personally thought the book could have gone much further astray on that issue than it did.

Due to the limits of the word lengths, of course, no one was able to lay out their full set of arguments, but I’m familiar with the work of all four of these organizations and I felt that each contributor did a pretty good job at laying out an overview of their positions. They also did a decent job at acknowledging the common ground that they all share. I know from their writings outside of this format that they are not nearly as civil about it elsewhere but it was refreshing to see them get along so well here – yes, it could have been even better, but you take what you can get!

Over several (four or more) upcoming blog posts I plan to outline each of the cases these people make for their positions on these topics, discuss the critiques of their debate colleagues, their rebuttals, and my own thoughts on the issue.