Not too long ago I finished Francis Collins’ The Language of God. Good book; I recommend it. I realized, when I was almost all the way through it, that I was agreeing with much of what Collins said, and the thought occurred to me that I can no longer call myself a Christian Fundamentalist.

My listing from Fundamentalist doctrine has been going on for a while. It started when I decided to give the views of a Young or Old Earth a critical look. Now I wanted to validate Scripture, and if one takes a ‘literalist’ view, a young earth and a six-day creation are the only interpretations that make sense. It is all that one can believe.

But the evidence of an old universe is compelling. I have always had an interest in the heavens: the most peaceful moments in life have occurred out far away from the city, looking up at the diamonds scattered across the sky. This initiated my love of physics: for there is a beauty not only in the thing itself – in the nebulae and stars and galaxies and black holes – but also in the rules and patterns that govern them, a dance beyond the fathoming or comprehension of men. Glimpses into this are like faint stirrings of Heaven’s music. And no one can deny that we are receiving starlight from billions of light years away.

I immediately, as a literalist, had a few options. One was to ignore the scientific data and thus ignore its Creator. This was not a path I wanted to go down. Another was to change the scientific data, to claim different physical laws for the past in order to conform the data to a particular interpretation of religious text. But this immediately ran into problems: the physical laws are so finely tuned that tiny alterations, much less wild variations, would throw the universe into irreparable chaos). Another option, and perhaps the most disgusting of all, was to say that God had planted evidence (starlight) that points to no reality: that this was all created ‘as it were’ or, if we are cleverer wordsmiths, ‘with age’ (i.e., that God created starlight on its way to Earth, which never truly emanated from a star – that all those novae we have seen exploding and nebulae forming never truly existed). But this is wholly incompatible with who I understand God to be. He is not a trickster: he does not plant evidence that leads us nowhere; he does not manipulate the world in order to make things appear contrary to their nature. When we claim this, we claim a God who hates reason and enjoys playing mind-games with his creation. How sick!

And if we are to admit that the Big Bang, while imperfect, is the most probable and rational view for Creation, we can see a majestic and heavenly dance that God has orchestrated since the beginning of time, where matter and energy have tangoed and flown together in intoxicating obedience to the fundamental forces. This should humble us to how small we are compared to God’s Creation, and how much more inconceivably insignificant we are compared to his glory.

And so I had to admit the age of the universe. Re-read Genesis, and tell me what it means for God to literally ‘separate the light from the darkness’. Light is a particle-wave of no rest mass that travels at the speed limit of the universe in a congruence with Relativity that boggles my mind. It permeates the universe in timeless accord with all the laws of physics. What does it mean for God to literally separate ‘light from darkness’? Were the photons gathered in one place and not in another? We are here reading a poem, a psalm, a praise, and not literal history.

Then I looked at the age of the earth, and the evidence for the last ice age overwhelmed me, and confirmed the conflict with the sort of literalism I had been raised to believe. While some of the geological theories (such as canyon formation) have me confused, I have yet to approach a geologist about it, and on the whole, I must admit that the Earth is old indeed.

This raised the question of whether or not we could possibly have evolved. For a long time I resisted, but I had to ask myself: so what if we did? How does that diminish God’s glory? How does that sully Christ or the cross? I rejected it on alleged probabilistic grounds, but Collins brought up some genetic evidence of which I was unaware. I have not delved into it, but I cannot arrogantly dismiss sincere study of the matter on behalf of well-trained and intelligent men and women, and I have to ask: so what if I am descended from an ape? God is still the God who saves me and redeems me by his grace. Who am I worshipping, my own ‘high ancestry’ or the Uncreated God? I am but dust, whether raised directly from the earth or through common descent. What importance does one have over the other?

So what to do with Scripture? Consider Augustine:

The Spirit of God who spoke through [the biblical writers] did not choose to teach about the heavens to men, as it was of no use for salvation.

And Galileo, who loved God, yet held beliefs in conflict with such literalist interpretations:

I have two sources of perpetual comfort – first, that in my writings there cannot be found the faintest shadow of irreverence towards the Holy Church; and second, the testimony of my own conscience, which only I and God in heaven thoroughly know. And He knows that in this cause in which I suffer, though many might have spoken with more learning, none, not even the ancient Fathers, have spoken with more piety or with greater zeal for the Church than I.

And on the nature of the ‘slippery slope’ such views incur, Collins himself has excellent insight, which I quote from the book:

Doesn’t a compromise on Genesis 1 and 2 start the believer down a slippery slope, ultimately resulting in the denial of the fundamental truths of God and His miraculous actions? While there is clear danger in unrestrained forms of “liberal” theology that eviscerate the real truths of faith, mature observers are used to living on slippery slopes and deciding where to place a sensible stopping point. Many sacred texts do indeed carry the clear marks of eyewitness history, and as believers we must hold to this truth. Others, such as the stories of Job and Jonah, and of Adam and Eve, frankly do not carry that same historical ring.

Are we coming to Scripture missing the message because we are not looking for the proper one? The Bible exists for two chief purposes: to disclose the nature of God, and to bring men to him. And so it is on this last issue – the issue of Biblical ‘inerrancy’ and interpretation that I have come to my last and final disagreement with Fundamentalism, and what has caused a break. I cannot take the Scriptures at so-called ‘face value’. What most people mean to say by ‘face value’ is to commit the sin of Biblical interpolation: that is, to insert our modern context and mindset into an ancient text. The Bible is absolutely the Word of God, but we cannot tear the word apart from its culture and discourse context. We should hardly go around tape recording a person all day and then pull out bits of our recording, divorced from their environment, and use them to string together a belief concerning that person. Why should we then do this with God? He assuredly did speak to us: by prophets and apostles within a specific society to specific people at a time and place that existed in history.

My first real example of this was a brief study along with a group of men at my church on the New Testament Book of Jude. I hadn’t looked at it seriously before, but Jude relies very heavily on traditional and apocryphal literature for examples and metaphors. We don’t accept the writings these metaphors are taken from, but we do accept Jude. Why? Because we recognize that the author was speaking to a real audience in his day and time (not us here in the 21st century) and used stories his audience was familiar with in order to give them a clearer picture of the reality of God and our relationship to him. We must approach Scripture not the intent on prooftexting rules or scientific truths out of them. The purpose of all of God’s Word is to paint for us a picture of God himself, in terms and phrases that we can understand, so that we might come to him for salvation, and it is this Word that is seen most clearly and emphatically when it was made fully human. I mean Jesus Christ: and nothing in all of Scripture gets any deeper than the scandalous beauty of the cross. This is what it means to believe in the authority of Scripture.

Where does this leave me? I don’t think I am postmodern. I believe in such things as truth and reality and am not a Brian McLaren groupie. I will proudly brandish my conservative status to all interested (as to doctrine: a Calvinist, though I should hope a somewhat more tempered one than one is used to running into; as to tradition: holding to the Five Solas), but I must bid Fundamentalism adieu. I can no longer hold to the politics that so often come along with it: Christ himself said that his kingdom was ‘not of this world’. And I can no longer hold to the literalist’s view of Scripture: a high view – yes; an authoritative view – yes; but a view which above all keeps in mind the purpose of Scripture – a drawing near to God – when reading it.

This is not because I’m brilliant or have come to any sort of truth unguided and on my own. I have been reminded just today how terribly impoverished I am and in desperate need of Christ’s grace. Nor is this humility: it is a clean fact of scientific exactitude. I can only try to explain my position, right or wrong, and how I have come to it. I cannot rest on any of my own arguments, but only on Christ, along with you and all the rest of creation, for redemption to God’s side.