I am a little late to the party writing about this, but I figured better late than never. A couple months ago, everyone’s favorite creationist made a video titled I Am Willing to Cause Division in the Church over This, in which he argued that one’s beliefs about creation and evolution are of such importance that it would be worth causing church division over.1 The reason for that, he argues, is that it is worth dividing the church over Biblical authority. He says:

Does it really matter what you believe about the age of the earth? So I want to put it in another way. Does it really matter if we take God at his word? Because you see the issue is one of authority. People try to say oh the age of the earth the days are great just a side issue. It’s not a salvation issue. But is biblical authority a first tier issue? Because if the Bible is not authoritative, if it’s not the absolute authority, then you’ve got nothing.

Obviously, Ken Ham is referring to the idea that, for the Bible to be authoritative, Genesis must be a literal, scientifically accurate history of the origins of our world and the rest of creation, including us. He believes this implies that the earth is therefore only 6-10,000 years old and that evolution did not happen such that all creatures share a universal common ancestor. Rather, humanity and all other creatures were made in “kinds” ex nihilo by God.

Not only does Ham say that we must divide over this issue, but he also equates belief in evolution and millions of years with sin and darkness. He says:

We have got to remember that when you shine light in darkness, it divides the light from the darkness. Jesus came to create division to shine light in this dark world. The light of the truth of God’s word and the saving gospel. So we need to be united on God’s word. So we need to have unity and not have division when it comes to God’s word. And we are to create division in judging righteously… There’s going to be division because we’re all sinners and because men love darkness rather than light. But it’s got to be the right sort of division. In other words, division separating those who will not stand on God’s word and teach it correctly and those who do. But we also at the same time want unity. Unity on God’s word and what it teaches. And it answers in Genesis. We want to see unity on God’s word beginning in Genesis. And you know what? because of our stand on six literal days in young earth that does create division because there are many that say no we can believe in millions of years and no we can add evolution to the Bible, well that’s when we have to create division and say no that is not correct we need to stand on the authority of God’s word right from the beginning here in Genesis. Standing on the truth of the Bible is vital but sadly many Christian leaders have compromised God’s word with man’s faulty ideas.

Ken Ham believes that anyone who does not buy into the young-earth interpretation of Scripture is compromising on the Bible. Even other young-earth creationists are compromisers if they don’t agree with Ham’s specific interpretation of young-earth creationism.2

Is Ken Ham right to say that young-earth creationism should divide the church? Are people who reject Ken Ham’s view of Scripture compromising their faith?

Where I agree with Ken Ham

It might surprise you that there are things I agree with Ken Ham on in this video. For example, I think some things are worth dividing the church over. Particularly, I think we should cause division when people in the church are harming others because of their theological beliefs. We should speak out against that and call those people to repentance. It is for that reason that I could not be a part of a denomination or church that excludes women from the ministry or calls them to be the only ones submitting to their spouse, even when that spouse would be abusive.3

The question, for me, is not whether certain things should not cause divisions, because some issues are definitely worth causing division. The question for me is what kind of things are worth causing divisions and what kind of divisions should they cause?

Here are things that I think should cause division in the church:

1. I think the church should divide over essential doctrine.

2. I think the church should divide when one’s doctrinal beliefs harm others.

I want to unpack these two points and then show whether Ken Ham’s views on the Bible and creationism are worth dividing the church over.

Is Creationism An Essential Doctrine?

First, I want to explain what I mean by essential doctrine. An essential doctrine is something so foundational to Christian theology that if you were to remove it, then you would no longer have Christianity at all. Now, I need to define Christianity. If you were to ask me what is essential to Christian belief, I could point to a few things. First, I would point to essential Christian teaching as summed up in the Apostolic creeds (the Nicene and Apostles Creed). Or I could go off of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity vision which centers Christianity around the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, I think we could give three essential points as foundational for this specific conversation on evolution and creation.

1. A loving Creator God, who is Triune in nature, is both the creator and sustainer of all creation.

2. Creation is marred by sin and brokenness, such that though it is good, it is also in need of redemption and healing.

3. God became incarnate in Jesus Christ to save and redeem creation, which will fully manifest in an eschatological victory over sin and death.

Remove any of these pieces and I would say you don’t have anything resembling Orthodox Christianity. Now, the question becomes Is Creationism An Essential Doctrine?

I would argue it clearly is not. While I think it is essential for Christians to believe that God is the creator, the method by which God calls creation into being is not. Whether or not someone believes in creation through natural processes like evolution or through special de novo creative acts doesn’t really change the fact that God is the creator and sustainer of all things.

But… maybe Ken Ham would argue that evolution and millions of years undermines the second point given that death and suffering are inherent in an evolutionary process and therefore ruling out creation being good. Ken Ham has said this multiple times, and it is for this reason that he even claims that creationism is a “Gospel Issue” even if it is not a salvation issue.

Naturally, I disagree with Ken. First, we have to understand what “good” means in Genesis. The Hebrew word for good is ט֖וֹב (Tov). It can mean a whole host of things. It has a few meanings describing something or someone as aesthetically pleasing, morally good, or functioning properly. None of which means perfection or without death and suffering. Other words could be used if that were the intended meaning such as תָּמִ֥ים (Tamim) which means blameless or faultless or being without blemish.

Given the context of Genesis one, the likely semantic meaning of tov (good) has to do with something functioning as it should. For example, it is good (tov) that light functions as the day and darkness functions as the night so that ancient people could tell time. If this is the intended meaning of tov then it hardly seems appropriate to say that predation and disease are not good in the sense they lack function. Predators need to eat, and, without predators and disease, ecosystems would go unbalanced as herbivores would overpopulate and strip the land of resources.

Second, even if one agrees with Ken that death and suffering are not morally good, one could still argue for evolution while maintaining that God does not desire the death and suffering which come from it. For example, one could argue that the aggressive and deadly aspects of creation are the result of demonic influence leading organisms away from God’s intended design. Or, one could argue that evolution was the only way God could get the desired goods out of creation they wanted without necessarily endorsing the suffering that comes about because of such a process. Afterall, God does this in other areas. God gives us free will because that is the only way we can have genuine relationship and be moral agents, but this doesn’t mean that God approves of our harmful choices.

Finally, Ken Ham would object that evolution also undermines a literal Adam as the first human and a literal Fall which introduces sin into the world. That subjects deserves a whole separate piece, and I don’t want this to be longer than it needs to be. However, I have written about both of these points, so if you wish to read my thoughts on those issues then just follow this footnote.4

Regardless, it seems clear to me that embracing evolution and an old earth is not a threat to essential Christian teachings as mentioned above, so it should not cause division in the church on that front.

Does Belief In Evolution Harm Others?

If one’s beliefs about creation and evolution are not essential Christian teachings, then maybe they cause harm to others. Ken Ham certainly thinks that belief in evolution has caused many problems in the world. He thinks that embracing evolution leads to the secularization of society which embraces moral relativism. Here is a quote of him saying just that in a Premier Christianity article about him:

“If God’s people don’t stand on God’s word, and we don’t start teaching apologetics in our churches, and if we compromise with evolution and millions of years, and we allow generations to be indoctrinated in an anti-God secular education system, and we don’t counteract that and give them the right foundation, we’re going to see increasing moral relativism in the culture and an increasingly weak Church”5

Now, this is merely an assertion that is not backed up by any evidence. Ken Ham does talk about how even atheistic thinkers talk about evolution as inherently naturalistic which would conflict with a theistic worldview. Both Ken and those atheists, like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, are simply wrong about the philosophical foundations of evolutionary biology. Evolution is worldview neutral and does not lead to secularization or moral relativism.

If it did then one would expect Christians who embrace evolution to slowly drift into atheism, but this is not the pattern. Many Christians embrace evolution, have a vibrant faith, and even claim that belief in evolution bolstered their faith rather than deteriorating it. I could go down a list of such people: Frances Collins, N.T. Wright, Jim Stump, Alister McGrath and the list goes on and on. I would say my own faith has been enriched through learning about evolution.

What people like Ham and Dawkins fail to distinguish is the difference between metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism when talking about evolution. Metaphysical naturalism is the view that nature is foundational to reality and that there is no supernatural reality. Methodological naturalism is simply the view that one assumes that natural phenomena occur through natural processes, and that, through the scientific method, we can ascertain those processes. Evolution, as a scientific theory, operates under methodological naturalism as a procedural constraint, but simply operating under methodological naturalism does not entail that metaphysical naturalism is true or that God does not use evolution to create.

So, I would say that evolutionary creationism/theistic evolution is not harmful, and, therefore, should not cause division. Now, is the inverse true? Does Ken Ham’s views cause harm? I would say yes.

First, Ken Ham’s aggressive anti-science disposition has caused a deep seated distrust towards science and scientific experts on a wide range of issues, not just evolution. For example, many Evangelicals who embrace young earth creationism also distrust anthropogenic climate change and global warming.6 Several studies show that the two beliefs coincide with one another.7 The effects of global warming are seriously harming our planet, and we should not tolerate a message that minimizes human impact on our current climate crisis.

Second, Ham’s views fracture the Christian church unnecessarily. He calls those who disagree with him “compromisers” who don’t trust the Bible and downplay faith. In his worldview, it can’t just be that fellow Christians faithfully hold a diverse range of views on this subject. Instead, they must be compromising their faith and want to live in darkness.

Conclusion

I do not believe Christians should cause division over the theological merits of creationism. There should be room for disagreement on this issue. What we should divide over though is the harm caused by people like Ken Ham. Christians should call Ham to repentance over his elevating creationism to a place of “Gospel” level importance and calling others compromisers for not following his preferred interpretation of Christianity.

We should not tolerate the way Ken Ham and others like him spread unnecessary division and turn Christians against one another. We should be able to talk about the merits of one’s beliefs without poisoning the well against those who are sincerely trying to wrestle with science and faith but who come to different conclusions.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

In the last article in this series, I examined why Craig’s response to Alex O’Connor’s argument from animal suffering fell short. I won’t rehash those points here but you can read them in the footnote.1 Instead, I want to bring my own theological thinking to the conversation. Here is the original video if anyone needs to rewatch it.2

On one key point, I side with Alex over Craig: animals do have an awareness of suffering and pain, and that awareness is morally significant. I also agree that much of the suffering in the animal world appears gratuitous — that is, pointless suffering that neither serves some greater purpose nor prevents some greater evil.

However, I part ways with Alex on two counts. First, I don’t believe the existence of gratuitous evil in the natural world lowers the probability of a loving God’s existence. Second, I don’t think classical theodicies like the free will theodicy and the soul-making theodicy are as irrelevant to animal suffering as Alex suggests. They need to be extended and reframed, but they still have genuine bearing on the problem.

What I want to propose is a compound theodicy I developed in my ThM thesis, which I call a Redemptive Flourishing Theodicy (RFT). The central claim is this: if God is going to create a world where creatures are genuinely free to pursue the greatest degree of flourishing possible, such a world will necessarily carry significant risk — including the risk of what appears to be genuinely gratuitous suffering.

The “Only Way” God Could Do It

Craig employed an Only Way argument in the debate which is the claim that God had no alternative but to create a world like this one in order to achieve the goods he desired. But as I noted in Part 1, Craig never explained why an omnipotent God couldn’t have achieved those goods some other way. He simply called it “plausible” and moved on. That’s not enough. If you’re going to invoke omnipotence, you owe your audience a reason why even an omnipotent being faces this constraint.

I also use an Only Way argument in the RFT — but I think I can give the justification Craig skipped.

Here’s the core of it. If God is perfectly loving, then God desires the greatest possible flourishing for his creatures, and the deepest possible relationship with them. But here’s the crucial point: genuine flourishing can’t be manufactured from the outside. A creature that is simply assembled fully-formed — dropped into existence with all the capacities of a flourishing life already installed — has not actually achieved flourishing. It has been handed a simulacrum of it.

Part of what it means to flourish is to be an active participant in the process of becoming what you are. Flourishing isn’t a static condition to be installed; it’s a dynamic achievement, something creatures work out through their history, their choices, their relationships, and their development over time. This means that a world capable of producing genuine creaturely flourishing must be one in which creatures have a real causal history which entails a world where they emerge through process rather than appearing by fiat.

An evolutionary world is precisely such a world. When creation begins at the level of a single-celled organism and develops over billions of years through natural processes, creatures participate — at whatever level of complexity and agency they possess — in the unfolding of what they will become. Evolution is not merely a mechanism God tolerates; on this view, it is the kind of process a perfectly loving God would choose, because it is the kind of process that makes genuine creaturely participation in flourishing possible.

This is also why Alex’s suggestion that God could have created animals with identical biological functions but without sentience doesn’t resolve the problem. Sentience isn’t an add-on feature that could simply be removed while leaving everything else intact. The capacity to suffer is bound up with the capacity to experience, to respond, to relate, and those capacities are part of what makes a creature the kind of thing that can flourish at all. Strip away sentience and you don’t have a painless version of the animal world; you have a fundamentally different kind of world, one incapable of the goods a loving God would be trying to achieve.

The Only Way argument, then, isn’t just “God couldn’t do it differently” asserted as a brute claim. It’s grounded in the nature of flourishing itself: a world where creatures genuinely flourish must be a world where they genuinely participate in their own becoming, and that requires the kind of open, evolutionary, free-process world we actually inhabit with all the risk that entails.

Developing Personhood

Creatures capable of the greatest kind of flourishing are also persons. I am capable of greater degrees of flourishing than my cats, because I exhibit greater degrees of personhood. This also means my capacity for harm is substantially greater.

So, what makes something a person? Philosopher Mark Rowlands argues that personhood requires four things: the creature must be conscious, capable of reasoning and learning, aware of its own existence, and able to recognize other persons.3 I’d add one clarification that matters for what comes later; moral agency isn’t a requirement for personhood, rather it’s something that grows out of it. Human toddlers lack moral agency, but nobody thinks they aren’t persons. Personhood is the soil; moral agency is what eventually flowers from it.

What this framework reveals is that personhood isn’t binary. It comes in degrees. My cats are conscious: they learn, they recognize me, they have some basic sense of themselves as distinct from the world around them. But they satisfy these criteria less fully than I do. I can reflect on my own existence, reason abstractly, make genuinely moral choices, and relate to God in ways they can’t. The richer a creature’s personhood, the richer its potential flourishing, but this also means it has greater potential for harm as well.

For example, humans have the capacity to use fire for truly live giving purposes such as warmth or for cooking food. Humanity can also use fire to really harm others. Why? because the same attributes that make fire a tool for flourishing also can be used for harmful ends, and the same personhood capacities that we have developed can think of how to use fire for both ends.

This is the key insight I want to carry forward: the same conditions that produce the capacity for deep flourishing also produce the capacity for deep suffering. You can’t surgically separate them. A creature with enough inner life to truly thrive is also a creature with enough inner life to truly hurt.

Animals Are Developing Moral Lives

I disagree with Alex that free-will and soul-building theodicies have no baring on the animal world. I think if our world is capable of developing creatures with greater capacities for personhood, then there should also be differing degrees of moral subjectivity in the world.

Elephants, for example, have a very rich self-consciousness that I would argue lends itself to a degree of moral subjectivity. They are capable of altruism and empathy. My favorite story showing this is the matriarch Eleanor, who died while her child, Grace, steadily tried to keep her upright. Ultimately, Eleanor died while Grace shrieked, stayed by her mother’s side for hours, and was visibly distressed while other elephants in the herd gently nudged her to comfort her. Elephants can also choose violent behavior as well.

Biologist Douglas Chadwick once recounted an encounter in Africa where a group of him and his friends were being chased by an elephant while roaming the African wildlands. The elephant had snuck up by their car during the night and had let out a large trumpeting sound prior to chasing them. Luckily no one was injured due to the event. After reflecting on the incident, Chadwick said, “I will never know what the elephant had in mind that night, but upon reflection, I have to credit the animal with giving us fair warning. If it had really been out to smoosh us, it could have merely waited where it was and let us bump right into it.”4

This capacity to choose between altruistic and violent responses shows that elephant are, what Rowlands calls, “moral subjects.” Moral subjects act for moral reasons based on morally laden emotions which motivate their actions.5 Rowlands distinguishes “subjects” from “agents” on the grounds that agents are responsible for what they do and can be held accountable while subjects lack the reflection and phronesis necessary to be considered morally responsible given that they can’t understand the moral consequences or need for moral normativity in their actions.6

Basically, many animals are like children. They can act out of altruistic motivations, impulses, and emotions but they can’t reflect deeply on moral virtues they should have and how that should shape their choices. All in all, it seems that animals have varying degrees of personhood which also allows for varying degrees of moral subjectivity. Again, this should be the expected result if God is guiding creation towards greater degrees of flourishing.

And if that's the trajectory of creation, it raises a natural question: what does God intend for creatures at the end of that journey?

Redemption and Animal Theosis

While I would agree with Alex that a perfectly loving God would not desire the suffering creation goes through, I would also argue with Alex that God is not passive to the pain of creation and will bring redemption for all creatures.

First, I would argue that God is always involved in the creative process. As Bethany Sollereder puts it:

The path of creation is improvised: a dance between God and creatures, and between creatures and their contexts. No creature has complete and unencumbered freedom, including humans. Every creature is limited by its own innate capacity and by environmental factors, but it is free to develop within those constraints, with internal freedom and without a determined end.7

God and creatures are partners in the creative process as God gives life, freedom, and empowerment to creatures as they selve and creatively engage their world. If God creates a world with free creatures, then God cannot simultaneously have such a world while also determining how those creatures will selve. God must operate according to his creative decrees. If God desires creatures to pursue their own flourishing, then God must operate within the parameters of that creative decree. This means that God, for the most part, cannot directly, supernaturally intervene in the world. Instead, God works within creation by empowering, directing, and calling creatures to greater degrees of flourishing and complexity. Unfortunately, this means that creatures can selve in ways that resist God’s invitation of love.

Sollereder puts this beautifully:

The violence in the tiger’s hunting reflects God’s freedom-giving character, while not reflecting God’s own moral character. The tiger’s aggressive way of being in the world was not directly planned by God, or caused by God’s persuasive call upon the long line of tiger ancestors, but came about through each ancestor pursuing its own good, developing new skills, and surviving long enough to reproduce successfully.8

Second, I would argue that God is able to relate to all creatures through what is called Deep Incarnation. Deep incarnation argues that through Christ’s incarnation, God not only recapitulates human history and existence, but also creaturely existence enveloped in the evolutionary process.

God suffers as creatures suffer because God is relationally tied to every creature. This means that God understands what it means to not only suffer as a human but also to suffer in every creaturely way possible. This is important because only a God who understands creaturely existence at a fundamental level can offer redemption to them. Second, the incarnation shows that death is not the goal of creation but merely the catalyst for resurrection unto new life. The resurrection is not the doing away of biological life but is instead the transformation of one’s biological life and entangling that life with the divine life.9

In some ways, we already see this undertone of new life being brought by death in the biosphere as the death of one animal gives life to another, and the extinction of animals paves the way for new life forms to arise. The resurrection speaks to the reality of now and not yet. In Christ, God has already dealt a decisive blow to death, the ultimate reality of harm and sin, and has opened the way for creation to experience new life and be joined in Christ.

Finally, I would argue that God is actively at work, both in this life and the next, redeeming every creature within the parameters of allowing creatures to pursue flourishing. I would say that God does this through Theosis. Theosis is the Christian doctrine of salvation as being the “partaking of the Divine nature” without becoming divine. In other words, the goal of salvation is multi-faceted. Not only does God save us from death but also invites us to share in the divine life in fuller ways, such that we become more “God-like” or “Christ-like”. I believe this extends, to varying degrees, to the animal world such that creatures also share in the divine life and are perfected in their nature such that they experience the fullness of flourishing possible.

Philosopher James Henry Collins puts this into perspective:

Theosis then is utterly transformative, and the transformation is cognitive as well as ethical. Deified human beings have far greater cognitive capacities than their nondeified counterparts. The point here is that all this applies, mutatis mutandis, to the animal case. Animals too, in union with God, will ‘never cease growing in knowledge, power, and love’.10

Given postmortem opportunity for non-human animals, two possible answers to the question of animal theosis seem to emerge.

The first is that God's evolutionary drive toward flourishing, combined with the attractive pull of divine love, means that all creatures will eventually gravitate toward the fullness of flourishing which means that something like universal reconciliation is true for the whole of creation, not just humanity.

The second is that some creatures may, through their freedom, solidify themselves in patterns that move them ever further from God and from flourishing. If that's possible, then the question becomes what a loving God does with a creature incapable of experiencing the good God desires for it. I don't think a loving God simply leaves it there. Whether that means continued redemptive invitation or, in the most extreme cases, a merciful annihilation — the end of a suffering that has no other resolution — I'm genuinely uncertain. But I'm confident a loving God doesn't abandon the creature to its misery.

I tend to lean towards the universal reconciliation of all creation. I think that makes the most sense of what God desires for all creatures.

Conclusion

Christians can make sense of animal suffering in the natural world, and we don’t need to minimize it to do so. Craig’s approach failed here precisely because it tried to shrink the problem rather than meet it. Complex questions deserve serious answers, and the problem of animal suffering is one of the most serious questions Christianity faces.

Alex’s instinct is right: animal suffering is morally significant, and a loving God would not be indifferent to it. I share that conviction entirely. Where Alex and I part ways is over what that suffering tells us about God’s existence. I don’t think it points away from a loving God. If anything, it may point towards a God who is not a cosmic micro-manager pulling every lever of creation, but a loving parent who gives creatures genuine freedom, enters into their suffering through the Incarnation, and is patiently, persistently at work redeeming what has been broken.

That kind of God is harder to defend than an omnipotent controller who could simply have made things otherwise. But it’s also, I’d argue, far more compelling and far more honest about the world we actually inhabit.

I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to be on the launch team for Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray’s book Fish with Feet: Human Evolution and the Image of God. Due to that, I was able to read a pre-released copy of the book for review. Dr. Ray is a Christian who also teaches evolutionary biology at the University of North Texas. She does fantastic work in the science and religion field.

This was an amazing book! I highly recommend pre-ordering it so that you can get it as soon as it comes out.

The book provides a wonderfully accessible introduction to human evolution, showing not only how evolution works but also how our story is biologically connected to other creatures: such as fish. Dr. Ray goes through different biological traits we share with fish due to having a “fishy” ancestry. Here is a quote from the book showing those connections:

“At one month of age, human embryos are virtually indistinguishable from other vertebrate embryos, including those of fish. Your eyes start out on the side of your head, like a fish. Your top lip, jaw, and palate are part of the gill-like structures in your embryonic neck, structures common to all chordates. Your nostrils and the middle part of your lip are at the top of your head.” (62).

Basically, the little groove between our nose and mouth is an evolutionary clue to our primordial past. All pointing to the reality that humanity is connected to all creatures through an evolutionary process.

The book does a great job in laying out the science of how that works, and even a non-specialist (like yours truly) is able to keep up with its message. Given that I am not a scientist, I won’t waste much of this review combing through the scientific points made by Dr. Ray.

However, one of the most glorious things about this book is that it is a tour de force against creationist talking points and misconceptions about evolution. I will talk a little bit about that. Finally, the book ends on a theological note after tracing the human evolutionary lineage. This is where I will spend more time reflecting on the book.

All in all, this was a very positive read and I wholeheartedly encourage anyone curious about the relationship between science and faith to pick up this book!

Dismantling Creationist Talking Points

Throughout the book, Dr. Ray takes creationist and intelligent design talking points to task. I won’t go into all of them, but I figured it would be fun to highlight my favorites throughout the book. If you want an accessible critique of creationism, I, once again, recommend getting this book.

“Creationism is a Scientific Alternative to Evolution”

No, it is not, and Dr. Ray makes this point loud and clear. She argues that creationism, unlike science, begins with a foregone conclusion and seeks to make the data fit that conclusion (49). Science works the other way around: a hypothesis is proposed and tested, and it earns the status of theory by surviving repeated attempts at falsification. Evolution is a theory in this technical sense, which means it is not a guess awaiting proof, but instead an explanatory framework backed by multiple independent lines of evidence, from the fossil record to comparative genomics to embryology. Creationism doesn’t operate this way. It starts with a particular interpretation of the Bible and treats that interpretation as the lens through which all data must be read, even when the data runs the other direction. Flood geology, for instance, has to explain millions of years of visibly stratified sediment as the product of a single year-long deluge — not because the rock layers suggest it, but because the conclusion was fixed in advance.

“Flood Geology Can Explain the Fossil Record”

It cannot, and the Cambrian record shows exactly why. Dr. Ray points out that a global flood wouldn't produce neat, ordered sedimentary layers but instead a jumbled mess, sweeping up plants, animals, and human remains together indiscriminately (50). She uses the Cambrian to make this point concrete. If a violent, all-at-once flood explains the complex organisms we find in the Cambrian, then that same violence should have swept up other complex life too — sea stars, spiders, dinosaurs, humans — and deposited them right alongside those organisms. Instead, we find none of that. What we find is exactly what gradual evolution predicts: the elementary beginnings of complex body plans, emerging from simpler, soft-bodied pre-Cambrian organisms in a clean progression from simple to complex, preserved in order, layer by layer.

“Intelligent Design Explains the Human Body”

There are good reasons to think the human body was shaped by evolutionary pressures on pre-human ancestors rather than assembled, meticulously and supernaturally, by a perfect designer. Dr. Ray points to several design flaws in the human body that evolution explains far better than intelligent design does (155–158). Take the throat: it houses both the windpipe, which we breathe through, and the food pipe, which we swallow through. One wrong move and you're choking — food blocking the very passage your lungs depend on for oxygen. A designer building a body from scratch, with foresight and intention, would be unlikely to engineer such an obvious point of failure. It's a harder problem still for those of us who hold that humans are made in God's image, since other animals don't share the flaw: dolphins and whales, for instance, use separate passages for swallowing and breathing, with no such risk of choking.

There are many more examples I could go into, but this is merely to wet reader’s appetites for the book. Now, I want to shift to how Dr. Ray handles the theological implications of human evolution for the Imago Dei.

Human Evolution and the Image of God

Concordism and Adam and Eve

Dr. Ray opens the theological section of her book with a claim that’s uncontroversial in the scientific world but a genuine problem for anyone in theological spaces insisting humanity descended from two individuals, Adam and Eve. She writes:

We know the mutation rate in human DNA (about one mutation every seventy-five million bases per generation), and we know by what percentage we differ from each other (0.1 percent). Modern humans must have emerged from a population no smaller than fifteen to twenty thousand individuals. (163)

This conflicts with Christian views that read Genesis as literal history and understand humanity as tainted by original sin, inherited from a single first couple. Dr. Ray works through several concordist attempts to harmonize this data with a real first couple from whom all humanity descends, showing how each one conflicts with either the biblical text or the scientific evidence.

One I want to touch on briefly is William Lane Craig’s approach. Craig pushes Adam and Eve further back into evolutionary history, proposing that God spiritually and physically remade a pre-sapien male and female into the first modern humans, from whom all other modern humans descended (173).

But Craig has also said Christianity could survive without the doctrine of original sin, and he has called Genesis “mytho-historical” — meaning he doesn’t take many elements of the Genesis account as literal history (174). If you asked Craig whether the biblical authors had his particular interpretation of Adam and Eve in mind when they wrote, he would almost certainly say no. And nothing in the text itself forces us to read Adam and Eve as the literal progenitors of all people. It’s hard to escape the impression that Craig is shoehorning a literal Adam and Eve into evolutionary history because he wants to preserve intellectual credibility without rocking the Evangelical boat.

However, I'm also willing to be charitable and say Craig may simply be doing constructive theology by trying to make a literal Adam and Eve plausible for a modern, scientifically informed world. Even so, there's no need to do this. Many Christian thinkers are already showing how to wrestle honestly with the Genesis story and the doctrine of original sin without requiring a real first couple who screwed everything up.

Imago Dei and Human Evolution

Dr. Ray closes the book by digging into the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context of Genesis to unlock the multifaceted meaning of what it means for humanity to be made in the image of God.

Echoing thinkers like John Walton and Walter Brueggemann, she shows that Genesis is an ancient document depicting God bringing order to a chaotic creation (181–183). Humanity, rather than being slaves to the gods, are royal priests residing in the sacred space of creation. To be an image-bearer isn’t about material origins — it’s about function and meaning (184–186): humanity was created to partner with God in extending shalom throughout creation.

This functional view of the image resolves a tension the rest of the book raises: if we share evolutionary history with fish and every other creature, image-bearing can’t be about some unique material stuff humans alone possess. I think the church should shift toward this view for that reason alone.

This functional account is also constructively compatible with other accounts of the imago Dei, including theologian Thomas Jay Oord’s “relational love” view. Oord argues that creatures image God’s creative reign of love when they love in response to God’s leading.1If God is love, then representing God to others means loving them, which is the royal-priesthood function named above made concrete: to act as God’s image-bearer is to do what God does, and what God does is love.

Concluding Thoughts

I once again highly recommend this book. It does 3 things remarkable well:

1: It is an accessible introduction to the science of evolution

2: It does a great job at showing why creationism is wrong

3: It gives a constructive way forward in how to properly harmonize science and theology.

What this book gives us is an apologetic which is scientifically informed while also being against bad creationist apologetics that try to undermine the credibility of science, which I would argue undermines the credibility of Christianity. If I can’t trust you with understanding the material world, why should I trust you to help me understand the spiritual one?

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

I have written several articles on the concept of hell. Those who have followed my work on this topic will know my thoughts on the subject. I am not a fan of eternal conscious torment (ECT), which is the most common view among conservative evangelical Christians, and I defend universal reconciliation elsewhere.

With that being said, I have a very specific goal for this article: to show that certain views of eternal judgment are logically incompatible with Christian theism due to the way they magnify the religious problem of evil.

For those unfamiliar, there are multiple versions of the problem of evil. The logical problem of evil argues that there is a strict logical incompatibility between the reality of evil and the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God. The evidential problem of evil argues that the sheer abundance of seemingly gratuitous suffering lowers the probability that a loving, all-powerful God exists. The version this article addresses, however, is the religious problem of evil — the argument that an all-loving, omnipotent God is incompatible with certain ideas found in Scripture or religious doctrine.

For example, an all-loving, omnipotent God would never condone or command slavery, yet the Bible depicts God doing exactly that. This creates a tension: either the Bible is mistaken on this point, or the slavery passages are not as morally problematic as they appear. What the solution cannot be is that God, as understood in classical Christian theology, genuinely endorses slavery since that would contradict the very character Christians ascribe to him. This kind of friction between God’s supposed nature and specific doctrinal claims is precisely what the religious problem of evil exposes. Hell is one of the most acute examples of that tension.

Most people recoil at the idea of hell as eternal conscious torment, and for good reason: it strikes many as grotesque and irreconcilable with a loving God. I want to make that intuition rigorous. My argument is not merely that ECT feels wrong, but that it is logically incompatible with Christian theism.

This article will focus purely on analytical theology. I will not be engaging the biblical data on the various views of hell found in Christian thought, since I think a legitimate case can be made for several positions from Scripture alone.1 The question here is philosophical, not exegetical.

The Problem of Divine Love

Any view of divine judgment which is logically compatible with Christian theology must not contradict the idea that God is perfectly loving. If it does, then it is not an option for faithful Christians to hold to.

But this highlights an important question: what is love? Open and Relational theologian Thomas Jay Oord say that to love is to, “act intentionally, in relational response to God and others, to promote overall well-being.”2 Oord isn’t alone on this idea of connecting love with the seeking of flourishing.

Eleanore Stump, a Catholic theologian specializing in Thomas Aquinas, argues that love has 2 distinct qualities: 1) love requires the desire for the good of the beloved and 2) desires to be united to the beloved.3 Jordan Wessling, in his analytical treatment on God’s love for humanity, argues that to love means that one values the perceived worth of the beloved.4

Each of these accounts of divine love converge on a picture of love as valuing the existence and flourishing of the beloved while seeking the most proper and deepest relationship possible with the beloved. This is prima facie true since it is absurd to think that one could love the beloved without thinking of them as being valuable, desiring their existence, desiring their flourishing, and desiring relationship with them.

With this account of love in place, the tension with eternal conscious torment becomes clear. If God eternally sustains people in conscious torment when it was within his power to end it, then God neither values those persons, nor desires their flourishing, nor seeks union with them. That is not a portrait of love by any of the definitions above, rather it is closer to the opposite. ECT, on this account, does not merely strain the doctrine of divine love; it contradicts it.

Proponents of ECT might raise two objections at this point:

Objection 1, Hell is simply justice for sin so a just God must punish sin, and a loving God pursues justice.

Objection 2, God does not send anyone to hell; rather, people choose hell by rejecting God, and a loving God will not coerce anyone into relationship with himself.

I will take these in turn.

On the first objection, I fully agree that a loving God pursues justice. However, the question is whether ECT is actually compatible with perfect justice, and I will argue in the next section that it is not.

On the second objection, the free will defense is more interesting but ultimately insufficient. Granting that a loving God cannot coerce relationship, this does not mean ECT is the only alternative. The argument assumes a false dilemma: either God forces reconciliation, or people suffer consciously and eternally. But there is logical space between these options. A loving God who cannot force union could nonetheless end the suffering of those who reject him — through annihilation, for instance — without violating their freedom. Or, as universalists argue, God could continue to pursue the beloved across time through persuasion rather than coercion, since drawing someone toward love is not the same as forcing them into it. The free will defense shows at most that God cannot compel reconciliation. It does not show that eternal conscious torment is the loving remainder once reconciliation is refused.

A further objection holds that God simply does not love those in hell, which would dissolve the tension between ECT and divine love entirely. If God has no love for the damned, then their eternal torment raises no contradiction with his loving nature.

Perfect being theology rules this out. By definition, a being who loves all persons — including the damned — is more loving than a being who does not. Since God is by definition the most perfect being conceivable, God must possess the most perfect love conceivable. A love that excludes some persons falls short of that standard. Therefore, God must love all persons, including those in hell.

This does not mean God endorses or is indifferent to wickedness. Love, as established above, is precisely the desire for the flourishing and good of the beloved, and a person’s continued wickedness is antithetical to their own flourishing. To love someone is not to affirm everything they do; it is to desire what is truly best for them. God can love the damned while being wholly opposed to the sins that led them there.

The objection, then, does not dissolve the problem. It only relocates it. If God loves all persons perfectly and desires their flourishing, the question returns with full force: how can a perfectly loving God sustain any person in eternal conscious torment?

The Problem of Divine Justice

Many proponents of ECT argue that God must punish sin in order to be just, and that hell is therefore necessary for God to maintain divine justice. However, if justice is to be consistent with divine love, ECT is incompatible with it. Two separate arguments show why.

The Restorative Justice Argument

1. Restorative justice is more just than purely retributive justice, because it not only addresses wrongdoing but seeks to repair the harm caused and restore the wrongdoer to wholeness.

2. ECT, with no possibility of post-mortem repentance or redemption, is purely retributive — it inflicts suffering without any restorative purpose.

3. Therefore, ECT cannot reflect perfect justice, since a more just alternative is conceivable.

The Proportionality Argument

1. Just punishment must be proportionate to the crime committed.

2. Human life is finite.

3. Therefore, human sin — being the product of finite creatures acting across a finite lifespan — is itself finite in scope.

4. Endless punishment for finite sin is disproportionate, and therefore unjust.

5. Therefore, ECT is incompatible with divine justice.

Objections and Replies

Several objections are commonly raised against these arguments.

Objection 1: We don’t take sin seriously enough. The first objection holds that God’s sense of justice simply differs from ours — that we underestimate the gravity of sin, and that a proper understanding of its offense would vindicate eternal punishment.

This objection proves too much. If our moral intuitions are entirely unreliable guides to divine justice, we lose the very faculty by which we recognize anything as just or unjust — including the claim that God is just. Christians hold that God has written the moral law on human hearts. If that is true, then deep and nearly universal moral intuitions carry evidential weight about what God considers just. And the intuition that endless punishment for finite sin is monstrous is about as strong and widespread as moral intuitions get. If ECT is just, there should be some moral logic that reveals it to be which reframes our intuitions rather than simply overriding them. The bare assertion that God’s justice is different is not that account.

Objection 2: Sin against an infinite God requires infinite punishment. This objection shifts the focus from the nature of the crime to the dignity of the one offended. Since God is of infinite worth and perfection, any offense against him demands an infinite penalty regardless of the specific sin committed.

This objection faces two serious problems.

Read more

Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable recently hosted a debate between the renowned Christian philosopher William Lane Craig (WLC) and Alex O’Connor, formerly known online as Cosmic Skeptic. Both are serious intellectual voices in the religion debate space, and the exchange was, for the most part, substantive and worth watching.

My view is that Alex O’Connor had the better of the debate. There were several moments where he got the edge on Craig, but I want to focus on one exchange in particular: their discussion of animal suffering. It’s a topic I wrote my ThM thesis on, and one I’ve thought about at length.

My aim here is not simply to score points against Craig. It’s to show that his response to Alex’s argument from animal suffering was inadequate — and that Christians actually have stronger theological and apologetic answers available. What concerns me is that Craig’s approach reflects how a large portion of the Christian apologetics world handles this issue. As someone who cares about the intellectual credibility of the Christian faith, that’s worth addressing.

This is Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll offer my own theological and apologetic response to the problem of animal suffering, and readers can judge whether it improves on what Craig offered.

What Happened in the Debate

The full episode is available on the Unbelievable YouTube channel.1 Alex opens this section by noting that animals are largely ignored in philosophical discussions of evil and suffering. He runs through the standard theodicies — free will, moral development, soul-making — and argues that none of them apply to the animal world. They therefore fail to explain the problem of animal suffering. His central question is pointed: how can it be loving and just for God to use evolution, a mechanism that depends on animal suffering to produce creaturely diversity, as his method of creation? Why not create another way?

Alex is not alone in pressing this question. Theologian Bethany Sollereder, in her book God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy Without a Fall, asks similarly: “Is the project of creation worth the risk of even one innocent creature who suffers and dies in agony?”

Craig offers several responses. First, he argues that animal suffering is “vastly more improbable given naturalism or atheism than theism.” Since the fine-tuning argument supports God’s existence, and under naturalism life would be highly improbable, Craig suggests that animal suffering actually counts as evidence for theism rather than against it.

It’s worth noting the context: the broader debate was not specifically about animal suffering, but about the overall probability of God’s existence. Alex’s argument was that animal suffering lowers the probability of a loving God, given that an all-loving, omnipotent God would seek to minimize suffering wherever possible. Craig’s probabilistic reframe was a way of resisting that inference.

Craig then speculates about why God might permit animal suffering:

“It seems to me that God’s overall purpose for creating life on earth is for the purpose of human salvation, and that his goal is to create a world in which the optimal number of people would freely come to know and embrace eternal salvation, which is an incommensurable good to which the suffering in this world cannot even be compared. And I don’t think it is at all improbable — not in a whit improbable — that only in a world suffused with natural and moral evil would the optimal number of people freely come to embrace God and his salvation and so find eternal life. And that could well be the reason for creating a world with an evolutionary history that involved, as you say, a lot of animal suffering.”

In short: a world like ours might be the only way God could maximize the number of people who freely choose salvation. When Alex presses him — asking why God needs a zebra’s windpipe crushed by a lion in order to secure optimal salvations — Craig appeals to something like the butterfly effect: every moment ripples through history, and no seemingly gratuitous instance of suffering is ever truly gratuitous, since each plays some role in the broader causal web of redemption. He offers fossil fuels as an example of how animal death contributed to conditions that made modern civilization possible.

Alex responds that it seems implausible an omnipotent God couldn’t produce the same goods some other way. Craig’s counter is that Alex would need to show under what conditions God could deliver those goods without the suffering. Alex then offers a concrete alternative: God could create animals with the same biological functions but without sentience — making them, in effect, biological machines incapable of suffering. Craig replies that Alex would need to show such a world is actually possible given God’s perfection.

Then comes the audience Q&A, where things get more interesting. An audience member asks whether Alex is overemphasizing suffering, given that animals also experience considerable pleasure. Alex responds that the suffering far outweighs the pleasure, and that even if it didn’t, it wouldn’t excuse what appears to be genuinely gratuitous suffering in the natural world.

Craig agrees that Alex overemphasizes suffering, then adds a claim that becomes pivotal for the rest of the discussion. Drawing on philosopher Michael Murray’s book Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, he argues:

“Even sentient animals like sheep and goats and dogs and cats, while they have pain awareness, they do not have that second-order awareness of knowing that they are themselves in pain, which human beings as self-conscious subjects do. And that makes human pain and suffering qualitatively distinct from animal suffering.”

This is where Alex’s frustration becomes visible — and understandably so. He argues that Craig’s claim is self-contradictory: to be in pain just is to be aware that you are in pain. He also asks the obvious follow-up: if animals don’t register their own suffering, why would animal cruelty be wrong?

Craig responds that God has commanded us to steward creation well, so cruelty to animals is wrong regardless. Alex then presses Craig on his empirical claims — pointing to the mirror test as evidence of animal self-awareness and citing “Patient R,” a human who lost his prefrontal cortex but remained consciously aware of pain. Craig concedes that if Alex’s data is accurate, then both Murray and he would be mistaken.

Where Craig Went Wrong

Fine-Tuning Doesn’t Save Him Here

I find the fine-tuning argument for God’s existence genuinely compelling in a cumulative case for theism. But it wasn’t very useful in this particular exchange, for three reasons.

First, this section of the debate was Alex’s opportunity to make a positive case for doubting God’s existence. Redirecting to fine-tuning pulled the conversation away from the substance of his argument before it had been addressed.

Second, Craig assumes that fine-tuning can only be explained by theism — which is precisely what Alex disputes. Non-theistic explanations such as the multiverse remain live options and Craig must explain why they are not successful at addressing the fine-tuning of the universe rather than assuming that theism is the only game in town.

Third, and most importantly: even a fully successful fine-tuning argument only gets you to deism — a God who created a life-permitting universe and then became entirely inactive. Alex’s argument is specifically about the probability of a loving, personal God. Craig might claim a technical win by pointing out the debate’s broader framing wasn’t limited to that kind of God. Fair enough — animal suffering does little to disprove deism. But then the question becomes: who cares? A deistic God is functionally indistinguishable from no God at all. There’s no relationship to be had, no salvation, nothing that touches our lives. The win is hollow if the problem of animal suffering lowers the probability of a perfectly loving God existing.

Is the Purpose of Creation Really Just Human Salvation?

Craig’s entire response rests on a deeply anthropocentric view of creation: God made the world primarily as a stage for human salvation. I don’t find a strong biblical basis for this framing.

The biblical narrative, read from beginning to end, seems more oriented toward God lovingly relating to all of creation and bringing it toward its proper telos — its flourishing. Salvation is a means to that larger end, not the end itself. From Genesis to Revelation, we see God moving creation from cycles of harm and destruction toward eschatological wholeness: the lion lying down with the lamb, swords beaten into plowshares. If that’s the arc, then animal suffering isn’t a footnote to the story, but part of what redemption needs to address.

If Craig’s premise is wrong, his entire theodicy collapses.

Omnipotence and the “Only Way” Problem

Craig also doesn’t adequately address Alex’s challenge to divine omnipotence. His implicit move is what philosophers call an “Only Way” argument: God had to create a world like this one to achieve the goods he desired. I don’t object to Only Way arguments in principle — I used one in my own thesis. But they require justification. You need to explain why the goods in question couldn’t be achieved another way, and why this particular world was necessary.

Craig doesn’t do that. He simply asserts it’s “plausible” that God couldn’t achieve optimal salvations without the precise quantity of animal suffering we find in the natural world. Alex’s intuition — that an omnipotent God surely has more options available — is reasonable, and Craig doesn’t give us grounds to dismiss it. The burden is on Craig to explain why God specifically needs a zebra’s suffering, and he doesn’t meet it.

Neo-Cartesianism Needs to Die

The most frustrating moment in the debate is Craig’s claim — drawn from Murray — that animals lack second-order awareness of their own pain. This view, which I’ll call Neo-Cartesianism (N-C), holds that animal suffering is morally unproblematic because animals don’t experience it in a morally significant way.

I share Alex’s frustration and want to add a few points of my own.

First, N-C runs directly against our commonsense moral intuitions. That doesn’t automatically make it false, but it means Craig carries an evidential burden: he needs to give us good reasons to override our prima facie confidence that animals do experience conscious suffering. Craig’s attempt — pointing to the absence of a prefrontal cortex in most animals — fails when confronted with cases like Patient R, who lacked a prefrontal cortex and still reported conscious pain. A simpler and more plausible response would be to note that animals react to painful stimuli in ways consistent with conscious suffering; Occam’s razor favors this straightforward explanation.

Second, N-C is heavily problematic for many scientific reasons. First, evolutionarily speaking, it stands to reason that the same environmental pressures that produced the capacity for human beings to feel pain have also instilled those same capacities in other animals since the ability to feel pain leads to better survivability. Second, multiple studies have concluded that different species are conscious of pain. For example, a 2009 study done by the National Academy of Science concluded that vertebrates, especially mammals and birds, discriminate between painful and non-painful stimuli which would imply a conscious awareness of pain.2 The evidence for non-human animal consciousness, which would include self-awareness and pain recognition, is so settled that an overwhelming number of scientists got together to sign The Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness in Non-Human Animals which states:

Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.3

Craig does not have a scientific or epistemological leg to stand on when it comes to arguing for N-C. This type of apologetic answer to the problem of animal suffering needs to die. It simply makes Christians seem scientifically illiterate and more driven by dogma and theology than by facts.

Conclusion

In this first article on the topic, I wanted to critique Craig’s performance against Alex. This debate was a classic example of why we need more responsible theological answers to the problem of animal suffering. I would say Alex won this debate even if I don’t agree with Alex that gratuitous animal suffering lowers the probability of a loving God existing.

I plan to write a follow-up article in which I respond to Alex’s objections from my own theological framework to show that there are better alternatives to this dilemma than Craig’s. Until then, if you are a Christian reading this, please stop using these arguments on this subject. Please let N-C die and don’t resurrect it. We can do better!

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

As a church educator, one of the things I lament is the lack of accessible, high-quality resources designed to foster theological reflection and conversation within the church, especially resources tailored for group discussion. Often, when I lead a study, we rely on books that require purchase. There is nothing wrong with that, but I felt compelled to create something freely available for church leaders and small groups. In this series, I will explore a range of topics that have sparked conversation and debate within Christianity. For each topic, I will outline the major perspectives Christians have held, offer critical engagement with those views, and then present my own perspective along with the reasons I hold it. I want to be clear that my goal is never to pressure anyone toward a particular conclusion, but to model careful, honest thinking so that you can reason through these questions yourself. Each article will also include reflection questions designed to help groups engage the material together.

Feeling the Tension

This story is fictitious and is only meant to help with the study of this subject by showing how it practically impacts faith.

Chase was excited about his church study group. They were finally on the topic of how science and faith interact with one another. Chase was in college as a biology major, so naturally, he was interested in discovering how his faith intersected with the natural world. While science made him more interested in God, he was well aware that some of his colleagues were atheists who believed certain scientific theories — such as evolution — replaced any concept of a creator deity with naturalism.

Chase hoped that this small group study would help him show his colleagues that faith and science need not conflict. He didn’t feel confident having that conversation yet, since he was not as well-versed in theology as he was in science itself.

Unfortunately, Chase’s pastor only seemed to confirm what his atheist colleagues had been saying all along. “God says in Scripture that everything was made in 6 literal days, and when we add up the genealogies in Genesis, we see the world is anywhere from 6-10,000 years old. If we believe that God’s word is true, then we must reject atheistic theories about origins and evolution that contradict it. Who are we going to believe — God’s word or man’s word?”

Chase shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He knew the pastor wasn’t representing the science accurately, but he stayed quiet until the pastor finished. “Could it be possible,” Chase offered carefully, “that maybe Genesis wasn’t meant to be taken literally, and that God used evolution to create?”

The pastor shook his head without hesitation. “We know from several features in the text that Genesis is historical literature. We either believe in God or man. And besides, why do you assume the Bible must be wrong? What if evolution is what’s really wrong?” There was a genuine concern in his voice, the kind that comes from a man who believes he is protecting his flock. But to Chase, it felt like a door being shut.

Chase’s heart dropped. What if his pastor was right? Maybe evolution was wrong, and he just hadn’t dug deep enough to learn the truth. Haunted by the idea that he was being disobedient to God and that maybe the field he wanted to spend his life in was built on a lie, Chase set out on a journey of exploration. After months of study, he concluded that evolution was the best working theory science had as to how life diversified, and that the objections his pastor raised weren’t as strong as they had sounded in that room.

But that realization opened a harder question. If his pastor was so mistaken about the evidence, could he be trusted with matters of spirituality and theology? And what did this mean for Chase himself? If he kept walking this road — deeper into science, deeper into honest questions — would there be any faith left at the end of it?

He sat with that thought for a long time. He wasn’t angry, exactly. Just unmoored. Maybe his atheist colleague had been right all along. Maybe science and Christianity were natural enemies, and maybe Chase had been fooling himself into thinking otherwise.

Science and Theology: Friends or Foes?

Even if the story above never happened, it speaks to a reality many Christians face when navigating how their faith intersects with the natural world. Conflict between church and science remains one of the top reasons Christians begin to doubt and sometimes leave the faith altogether.1 Many in the church wrestle with this intersection, and some have even made a career out of thinking carefully about it.

The hope of this article, and the next few in this segment of the series, is to offer an introductory exploration of this topic for church reflection. The goal is not to steer the reader toward a particular conclusion, but to help them get a lay of the land and to understand why they believe what they believe about this subject. I do have my own views, and I will share them at the end.

For now, though, let’s step back and take in the wider landscape before narrowing our focus. The best framework I’ve found comes from Ian Barbour, a physicist and theologian whose interdisciplinary training makes him one of the most credible voices on exactly this kind of question. His typologies categorize the possible relationships between science and theology, and each one answers the question of whether they are friends or foes a little differently.

So what are these typologies, and why do they matter?

Conflict

The first typology is conflict. The conflict paradigm holds that science and theology are fundamentally at odds, either in certain areas or across the board. Many in the New Atheist camp subscribe to this view and are quite public about it, advancing the narrative that science is the path to truth and enlightenment while theology traffics in myth and fantasy.

But it would be a mistake to assume that conflict thinking belongs only to atheists. Certain Christian creationist groups make a strikingly similar argument from the opposite direction — that certain scientific theories are incompatible with what they regard as true theological belief.

Young-Earth Creationists, like the pastor in our opening story, are perhaps the most prominent example. They argue that the Bible is inerrant and that theories such as an ancient earth, biological evolution, and the Big Bang simply cannot be reconciled with a God who created everything in six literal days. For them, theology holds the edge when it comes to truth about the world.

Other creationist groups, such as Old Earth Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates, also see some degree of tension between science and theology, though they tend to allow for more harmonization than their Young-Earth counterparts. These perspectives are worth exploring on their own terms, and we will return to them as the series develops.

Independence

The independence model argues that faith and science are neither friends nor foes, but something more like colleagues who work in entirely separate departments. Made popular by famed paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, this typology holds that science and religion each operate within their own magisteria — domains of authority — and that the two should not venture into each other’s territory. Science explores the natural world; religion explores morality, meaning, and spiritual truth. Within their own domain, each speaks truthfully. Outside of it, each is out of its depth.

Some Christians find this position genuinely appealing, and understandably so. Science explores the mechanisms of the natural world. Theology explores the mystery of God and his plans and purposes for creation. Most of the time, these two fields aren’t even asking the same questions.

But many Christians sense that the boundary isn’t quite so clean. Take the question of human origins. Many Christians hold that we are descended from Adam and Eve, and that sin entered the world through their fall. Science, however, points to evidence that humanity did not descend from two individuals but from a founding population of thousands. When both fields seem to be speaking about the same reality, which voice takes precedence? The independence model would defer entirely to science on questions about the natural world, but that raises its own difficulties. Where exactly do we draw the line?

What about miracles? Can we speak of the resurrection of Jesus as a physical, historical event? The independence model struggles to make room for these claims without quietly ceding the natural world entirely to science. For many Christians, that is a concession too far.

Dialogue and Integration

The final two typologies to consider are dialogue and integration. I am combining them here because I think they are difficult to fully separate — one tends to require the other. Together, they represent the view that faith and science both speak meaningfully about reality, and that rather than keeping them apart, we should seek to bring them into a coherent conversation.

Christians who embrace this dialogical-integration model are often called Theistic Evolutionists or Evolutionary Creationists. What unites them is a conviction that all truth is God’s truth including truth that emerges from scientific inquiry, even when it creates tension with certain traditional theological interpretations. Rather than treating that tension as a threat, they treat it as an invitation to think more carefully about both Scripture and the world God made.

This is, in fact, the approach taken by most scholars who work professionally at the intersection of science and religion. They do not see widely accepted scientific theories — evolution, the age of the earth, the Big Bang, the origin of life — as adversaries of Christian faith. Instead, they see the study of the natural world as one of the richest ways to deepen our understanding of who God is and how he works. To study creation, in this view, is to study the Creator.

This group encompasses a wide range of specific beliefs, and we will explore that diversity in later articles. For now, it is enough to say that the dialogical-integration model has attracted some of the most rigorous and faithful Christian thinkers working today and that alone makes it worth taking seriously.

Key Terms:

New Atheism: A movement that emerged in the mid-2000s, largely in response to the September 11 attacks and what its proponents saw as the dangerous resurgence of religious influence in public life. Generally is associated with the “Four-Horsemen” of New Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett). New Atheists tend to hold that science is the primary, and for some, the only, reliable path to truth about the world, and that religious belief persists largely because of ignorance, indoctrination, or psychological need rather than evidence.

Young Earth Creationism (YEC): The belief that God created the universe, earth, and all life in six literal 24-hour days, and that the earth is somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years old. This age is typically derived by adding up the genealogies recorded in Genesis and cross-referencing them with other biblical chronologies. YEC holds that the Genesis creation account is historical and scientific literature, not poetry or allegory, and that it should be read as a straightforward description of what actually happened.

Old-Earth Creationism (OEC): The belief that God created the universe and all life, but that the earth and universe are as old as mainstream science suggests which is roughly 13.8 billion and 4.5 billion years respectively. OEC accepts the scientific consensus on the age of the cosmos but rejects, or significantly modifies, the theory of biological evolution.

Intelligent Design (ID): A movement based on the argument that certain features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process like natural selection. It positions itself not as a religious movement but as a scientific research program, which is one of the things that makes it distinct from both YEC and OEC.

Theistic Evolution/Evolutionary Creationism: A position that fully accepts the scientific consensus on the age of the universe, the age of the earth, and biological evolution. What distinguishes it from purely naturalistic evolution is the theological conviction that the process was neither accidental nor purposeless. Rather, God created, and evolution was his method.

Reflection Questions for Study

Opening Story — Feeling the Tension

1. Have you ever felt caught between your faith and something you learned in school, from a book, or through personal experience? What did that feel like, and how did you navigate it?

2. Chase chose to stay quiet during the study rather than challenge his pastor in the moment. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt you couldn’t voice a genuine question in church? What made it feel unsafe?

3. By the end of the story, Chase is questioning not just his pastor but his faith itself. Do you think doubt is a sign of weak faith, or can it be part of a healthy spiritual journey? Why?

The Typologies

1. Which of Ian Barbour’s 4 typologies do you lean most toward when it comes to the relationship of science and faith? Or do you find something of value in each one?

2. The conflict typology shows up on both ends of the spectrum among New Atheists and among certain Christian groups. How are these groups different? How are they similar?

3. The independence model has real appeal in that it gives science and theology each their own lane. Where do you find that appealing, and where does it feel like it falls short?

4. The dialogue and integration model treats tension between science and theology as an invitation rather than a threat. Is that a posture that comes naturally to you, or does it feel risky? What would it require of you to hold tension that way?

Broader-Reflections

1. The author mentions that conflict between church and science is one of the top reasons people leave the faith. Has this been true in your own experience or in the experience of someone you know? What could the church do differently?

2. All truth is God's truth. Do you agree with that statement? What are its implications for how we approach scientific discovery? Can the truth of science change the way we see theology and vice-versa? How so?

Two of the most significant theological shifts in my own journey have been away from neo-classical theism and eternal conscious torment, and toward open and relational theology and Christian universalism. I find open and relational theology to be a major step in the right direction for understanding how God’s providence operates in a world inhabited by genuinely free creatures—creatures who can resist or embrace God’s love. Likewise, I find the belief that God will ultimately reconcile all things to himself—to redeem the whole of creation—to be far more coherent, and far more compelling, than the idea that God would condemn most of creation to endless suffering.

In this article, I am not attempting to defend either of these positions. I have done that elsewhere. Instead, I am asking a different question: if both of these views are true, can they actually fit together?

For those unfamiliar, a brief definition will suffice.

Open and relational theology broadly refers to the view that God relates to creation in such a way that creation genuinely affects God, just as God affects creation. As a result of this dynamic relationship, God does not possess exhaustive definite foreknowledge of future free actions. Rather than knowing the future as a fixed set of certainties, God knows all possible futures, along with the likelihood of each, and responds dynamically as history unfolds. This view is often grounded in the conviction that genuine freedom requires real alternative possibilities; if only one outcome is possible, then freedom becomes difficult to meaningfully affirm.

Christian universalism, on the other hand, is the view that through Christ’s work, all people will ultimately be saved and creation itself will be fully restored. This is not the same as pluralism, which claims that multiple religions are equally valid paths to salvation. Christian universalists maintain that salvation is through Christ alone, but that Christ’s redemptive work will, in the end, reach everyone. This hope is not without precedent in the Christian tradition, finding expression in thinkers such as Gregory of Nyssa and Origen, who saw in Scripture a vision of ultimate restoration—that just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

At first glance, however, these two views seem to pull in opposite directions. Open and relational theology emphasizes a genuinely open future, one in which outcomes are not fixed in advance. Universalism, by contrast, appears to guarantee a final outcome: the reconciliation of all people. One insists on real contingency; the other seems to promise inevitability.

So the question is unavoidable: can a future be genuinely open if its final destination is already assured?

In what follows, I will argue that these two seemingly divergent paths may, in fact, converge.

The Nature of Free Will

For the purposes of this discussion, I adopt Robert Kane’s account of free will. On this view, an agent is free if they are the ultimate source of their actions and if they can actualize genuine alternative possibilities—meaning they could have chosen otherwise.

This stands in contrast to compatibilist accounts of freedom, which define freedom in terms of acting according to one’s internal desires, even if those desires, and the resulting actions, are ultimately determined. It also differs from views that define freedom merely as the absence of external coercion, even if no real alternatives are available.

My reason for adopting Kane’s position is twofold.

First, it seems self-evident that if an agent is coerced into making a decision, then they are not free in making that decision. Freedom, at minimum, requires that one’s choice is not forced.

Second, and more importantly, freedom appears to require genuine alternatives. If only one outcome is possible, then it becomes difficult to meaningfully describe the resulting action as a choice. The very notion of choosing implies that multiple possibilities are available for actualization.

To put it simply: if I could only eat an apple for lunch and had no real ability to choose otherwise, then it would be strange to say I freely chose to eat an apple. The absence of alternatives undermines the reality of choice itself.

Of course, there are many aspects of life where we are not free in this sense. I cannot choose to be anything other than human, because no alternative is available to me. Where alternatives do not exist, neither does freedom, at least in the sense I am using the term.

With this understanding of freedom in place, we can now return to the central tension: can a genuinely open future be reconciled with the claim that all people will ultimately be saved?

The Freedom to Flourish

In The Inescapable Love of God, Thomas Talbott argues that genuine freedom includes an essential rational component. As he puts it, freedom involves “an ability to discern normal reasons for acting, to draw reasonable inferences from experience, and to learn important lessons from the consequences of one’s own actions.”1 In other words, free will is not mere randomness; it is the capacity to make meaningful, rational choices between alternatives.

Talbott’s point is not to deny that people make harmful or irrational choices. Rather, it is to suggest that such choices are never made as purely irrational ends in themselves. Even our worst decisions are typically tied to some perceived good. In other words, we do irrational things because we believe those things, however mistakenly, will bring relief, fulfillment, or resolution.

Consider a simple example: a child placing their hand on a burning surface. Once the pain is fully understood, the child will not continue to do so freely and knowingly, because the action is directly opposed to their own well-being. The clearer their understanding that touching the burning surface harms them, the less plausible the choice becomes.

We can see this dynamic even in far more serious and tragic cases. Take suicide, for instance. While many would rightly view it as a deeply harmful act, those who take such steps are not typically choosing harm for its own sake. Rather, they are often acting out of a perception—shaped by depression, despair, or overwhelming circumstances—that ending their life is preferable to continued suffering. The action, in other words, is bound up with a distorted but still intelligible pursuit of flourishing.

This distinction is crucial. Human beings do not choose evil simply because it is evil, nor do they pursue harm simply because it is harmful. Our choices, even when deeply flawed, are oriented toward what we perceive as helping our thriving.

And this raises an important implication: the more clearly a person understands reality, particularly the true nature of the good, the less likely they are to choose against it.

I also would say this freedom to choose how we flourish is inherent to being a human. I don’t think we are free to choose inherently irrational decisions that have no benefit to any perceived flourishing we desire for ourselves or for those we care for. I don’t think this undercuts free will because we still are the ultimate cause of our decisions and we still have the freedom to choose between alternatives, namely choices between things that actually enhance our flourishing and things that only give the illusion of enhancing our flourishing.

Now, what are the implications of this for an open and relational account of universalism?

Breaking the Illusion

Augustine of Hippo famously wrote, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, O Lord.” If God is the fullness of all that is good, true, and beautiful, then it follows that creatures who are oriented toward their own flourishing will ultimately find that flourishing in relationship with him.

This helps make sense of the human condition. We are restless. We pursue meaning, satisfaction, and abundance in a thousand different ways, often mistaking lesser goods for ultimate ones. Yet, as Jesus teaches, he himself is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and the good shepherd who leads us into abundant life. The implication is not merely that Jesus offers the good life, but that he is the fullness of it.

If this is true, then a crucial question emerges: how could anyone fully and freely reject that life once it is clearly understood for what it is? If separation from God is not true flourishing but only the illusion of it, then to reject God would be to knowingly reject one’s own thriving.

And this brings us back to the nature of freedom. If human beings always act toward what they perceive as good, and if God is in fact the highest and most complete good, then the clearer that reality becomes, the less plausible its rejection becomes. Sin, in this sense, is not simply rebellion but misperception. It is the pursuit of lesser goods under the illusion that they will satisfy.

But illusions can be broken.

If, over time, every person comes to see clearly—to recognize God as the true fulfillment of their deepest desires—then choosing God would not be a matter of coercion, but of clarity. The will would not be overridden; it would be rightly aligned.

In that sense, the final reconciliation of all people need not imply a closed or predetermined future in the way open and relational theology rejects. The path toward that end may remain genuinely open, shaped by real choices and alternative possibilities. But the end itself, a restored relationship with God, would follow not from compulsion, but from the eventual unveiling of truth.

And if every illusion is ultimately stripped away, it becomes reasonable to believe that every person will freely choose the abundant life found in God through Christ.

Freedom Fulfilled

One of the main objections that might be raised against this position is, “doesn’t this still eventually eliminate the open part of open and relational theology?” I can understand this objection, but I don’t think it does.

First, believing that every person’s future will inevitably end with reconciliation between themselves and God, does not mean that the future suddenly is void of possibilities. While it might be void of certain possibilities regarding ultimately rejecting God, this does not mean that a life with God only looks a certain way. Rather, it could be that there are infinite possibilities in how we fully relate to God and with each other.

Second, the unchanging nature of the decision to finally live in relationship with Christ is still considered a “free” decision due to what Kane calls Self-Forming Actions (SFA’s for short). According to Kane SFA assumes that:

Agents are ultimately responsible for having the wills (characters, motives, purposes) they express in action, only if sometimes in their lives they willingly (voluntarily and intentionally) perform certain (“will-setting” or “self- forming”) actions (SFAs) that it was causally possible at the time for them to have willingly avoided performing2

In other words, an individual has made choices in their life which drastically influence their character and disposition towards certain choices, which then makes it unlikely, maybe even impossible, for them to choose otherwise.

Applying SFA’s to everyone’s ultimate decision to follow God through Christ shows how these decisions are free even if there was no way for them to, at the end, choose otherwise. It is because there would have been previous life altering moments where their choices would have set their character and disposition in such a way that coming to saving faith in Christ would be inevitable.

If human beings, through countless genuinely free choices, experiences, and encounters with truth, gradually come to see God as the fullness of goodness and flourishing, then a final embrace of God may eventually become inevitable, not because freedom has been overridden, but because freedom has been fulfilled.

The key distinction is that this inevitability would emerge from the history of free choices themselves.

Conclusion

At first glance, open and relational theology and Christian universalism appear to move in opposite directions. One emphasizes a genuinely open future shaped by free creatures and real alternative possibilities. The other appears to guarantee a final outcome: the reconciliation of all things to God. One seems to resist inevitability, while the other seems to require it.

But perhaps this tension is not as irreconcilable as it first appears.

If human freedom is not the capacity for random choice, but the ability of rational creatures to pursue what they perceive as good, then the question changes dramatically. The issue is no longer whether people are able to reject God forever in the abstract, but whether anyone could eternally reject the very source of goodness, truth, beauty, love, and flourishing once that reality is fully unveiled to them.

Sin, in this framework, is not merely rebellion. It is blindness. It is the mistaken pursuit of lesser goods under the illusion that they will finally satisfy the restless heart. Yet illusions do not last forever. Human beings learn, grow, suffer, change, and are continually shaped by the consequences of their choices. Through countless self-forming actions, our wills are gradually formed toward the things we most deeply love and desire.

And if God truly is the fulfillment of every good desire, then the final reconciliation of all things begins to look less like coercion and more like awakening. Less like the destruction of freedom and more like its completion.

The future may remain genuinely open in how creation journeys toward that end. Our choices remain real. Our decisions still shape us and others in meaningful ways. Open and relational theology preserves the reality that history is dynamic, relational, and responsive rather than mechanically predetermined. But none of this requires that alienation, suffering, and sin remain eternal possibilities.

Instead, it may be that love is simply more enduring than illusion.

Perhaps the final victory of God is not that he overpowers free creatures, but that he patiently heals them. Not that he eliminates freedom, but that he brings freedom to its fullest realization. The triumph of divine love, then, would not be found in coercion, but in the persistent unveiling of truth until every creature finally sees clearly what it has been searching for all along.

And if that is true, then the convergence of open and relational theology and universal reconciliation is not only possible; it may be the most beautiful ending the Christian story could have.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

Many apologists fall into this trap by overstating the confidence with which we can “know” that Christianity is true. I say this, by the way, as a Christian who believes that faith in Christianity is reasonable. I acknowledge, though, that I could be wrong—and I have been wrong many times when it comes to theology and religion.

One such apologist who consistently overstates his case is Frank Turek. Turek is a conservative Christian apologist who makes a living doing apologetics. He has a script, and if you watch any of his videos, you will hear the same answers and the same line of reasoning every single time. This script is laid out in his book Stealing From God, where he argues that atheists have to “steal” from the Christian worldview in order to make sense of their own. One of the most nauseating examples of this is his claim that atheists have to steal from the Christian worldview in order to have a vibrant moral life. He writes:

In order to hold people morally responsible for their actions, atheists need to steal free will and morality from God. They have to steal such truths to have any chance at peace and goodness. Imagine a society that did not hold people morally responsible for their actions. There would be no civilization. The moral implications of atheism are unlivable.

Turek’s point is that atheists live as though morality is objective, while at the same time arguing that there is no objective morality if atheism is true. In other words, atheists are inconsistent: they live as though moral realism is true even though, on his view, their beliefs commit them to denying it.

When Turek talks to unbelievers about moral issues, he almost always falls back on the same move: “By what standard are you making this moral judgment?” While that question is, in itself, a good one, Turek uses it as a gotcha—one that conveniently relieves him of having to engage the substance of the moral concern being raised. And that is deeply frustrating when you’re listening to it.

With that being said, I think Turek is inconsistent in his moral reasoning and ends up much closer to the moral subjectivism he accuses atheists of.

Do Atheists Need God for Objective Morality?

One of Frank Turek’s points is that without God, there is no objective morality. He claims that moral realism can only be true if theism is true. I find this to be a highly problematic statement. I will get into why in a moment, but even if one couldn’t come up with a non-theistic way to ground objective morality, one could still argue—against Turek—that morality is, by nature, subjective and grounded in the promotion of flourishing and the reduction of harm. I don’t take this stance, even though I do believe that morality is ultimately geared toward the collective and individual flourishing of morally conscious creatures.

With that being said, let’s talk about why Turek is wrong to claim that theism is the only way to account for moral realism.

First, moral realism is a hotly debated topic in metaethics, and there are plenty of non-theistic accounts of it. For example, Erik J. Wielenberg, who has debated William Lane Craig on the nature of morality, argues that morality is an irreducible feature of reality. In other words, some states of affairs are simply good or bad; for example, a child’s suffering is inherently bad because the intrinsic nature of suffering is bad.

According to Wielenberg, our moral “oughts” arise from various features of a moral situation that give rise to those obligations. For example, if I have water and a child’s arm is on fire, then I am morally obligated to put out the fire because doing so would alleviate intrinsically bad suffering. On this view, morality functions more like the laws of logic or mathematics—something we apprehend—rather than something we subjectively construct.

Even if one argues that Wielenberg is wrong in his moral naturalism—which is often described as a form of moral Platonism—this is still a far cry from Turek’s claim that atheism entails moral subjectivism. It doesn’t do apologetics justice when apologists like Turek make sweeping claims as though atheists have no well-reasoned defenses of non-theistic moral realism.

The Inconsistency of Frank Turek’s Position

Turek claims that morality is grounded in God’s nature, which he describes as irreducibly good. According to Turek, our standard of goodness comes from God, and God has written that standard on our hearts.

The problem is that Turek also affirms that God does—or commands—things that would clearly violate that same standard of goodness if any other being were to do or command them. When confronted with this tension, Turek will generally sidestep the issue by asking the questioner, “By what moral standard are you judging God’s actions or commands?”

Unfortunately, this does nothing to address the point. If our sense of goodness comes from God’s nature, but God can command or do things that seem to violate that same standard of goodness, then how can we meaningfully say that anything is good? It’s like appealing to a contradictory standard—which I would argue is worse than having no standard at all, or even a subjective one.

The implications of this for Frank Turek’s moral framework are devastating. For example, Turek believes that abortion is morally wrong. But he also affirms that God ended the lives of countless unborn children in events like the flood. If God always does what is morally good, then Turek has to concede that abortion, in and of itself, cannot be intrinsically wrong—because when God does something functionally identical, it is not only permissible, but declared holy and good.

Now, Frank Turek will say that because God is the giver of life, God therefore has the right to take life. I have never found this argument convincing. Why should the fact that God is the creator automatically grant the right to take any life at will, without a morally sufficient reason? Turek seems to assume that this simply follows, but he never actually explains why it does. If the justification is simply “because God is God,” then the standard of goodness collapses into divine preference rather than objective moral truth.

Alternatives and Theological Price Tags

As someone who believes in moral realism—and that moral goodness does not become arbitrary through divine whim—I am convinced that God really is good and, therefore, cannot act unjustly. Because of this position, I have to pay a certain theological price tag. Namely, I have to believe that if God is truly good, then God did not do—or command—the violent acts attributed to Him in the Old Testament, nor would God consign people to an eternal hell. I cannot conceive of a morally sufficient rationale that would make those things good or just, and I see no reason to think such a rationale exists.

I consider it better to reject an inerrant view of the Bible—one that portrays God as doing or commanding evil—than to abandon the claim that God is genuinely good and does not act unjustly. I also think my position is more internally consistent than Frank Turek’s, which ultimately reduces to a form of divine command theory.

With that being said, I understand that many Christians will feel the tension in abandoning the inerrancy of Scripture. I would completely understand if someone were to say, “I am not sure how this is good or just, but I trust that God would have morally sufficient reasons for doing so, even if I cannot imagine them.” Or if someone argued that these texts should not be taken literally. I don’t feel the need to make those moves myself, but I consider them far more reasonable than Frank Turek’s apologetic strategy of simply asserting that these events are good and just because God does them. That is not a serious moral position.

Conclusion: What Good Apologetics Actually Requires

At its best, Christian apologetics is not about winning arguments or cornering people with clever one-liners. As Alister McGrath puts it, it is about communicating a vision of reality that is true, good, and beautiful—one that people can not only understand, but be drawn toward.

But that kind of apologetics requires intellectual honesty. It requires acknowledging the limits of our arguments, taking opposing views seriously, and refusing to settle for easy answers that collapse under scrutiny. When apologists like Frank Turek make sweeping claims about morality, ignore well-developed alternatives, and defend morally troubling positions by simply appealing to God’s authority, they are not strengthening the Christian faith—they are making it more fragile.

A faith built on overstated certainty and weak arguments will not survive serious questioning. And when it collapses, it often takes people’s trust with it.

If Christianity is true, it does not need to rely on bad arguments to sustain it. It does not need to flatten complex philosophical debates into false dilemmas or redefine goodness in ways that make it indistinguishable from power. It can withstand honest scrutiny. In fact, it should invite it.

Good apologetics, then, is not about proving Christianity beyond all doubt. It is about presenting it faithfully, thoughtfully, and with enough humility to admit where tensions remain. It is about trusting that truth does not need to be protected by intellectual shortcuts.

If we care about the integrity of the Christian witness, we should be willing to reject bad apologetics—even when it comes from within our own camp—and pursue something better.

Throughout this mini-series, I have been exploring the atonement of Christ by examining some of the most influential theories in church history. Each of these approaches is an attempt to wrestle with the same question: Why did Jesus have to die? So far, we have explored three different theories, each of which speaks a word of truth about the cross and what it accomplishes.

The first was the Penal Substitutionary Theory of Atonement, which argues that Jesus died to bear the penalty of sin, satisfying God’s justice on behalf of humanity. While I am not convinced this functions well as a literal mechanism for how salvation works, I do believe it preserves an important truth: the cross proclaims God’s forgiveness over human sin.

The second was the Moral Influence Theory of Atonement. This view suggests that the cross is not about changing God’s disposition toward us, but about transforming our disposition toward God and neighbor. In the self-giving love of Christ, we see a love that calls us to repentance and reshapes our lives. Even if the cross is doing more than this, it is certainly not doing less.

The third was the Recapitulation Theory of Atonement, which teaches that Christ “recapitulates” the human story—redirecting it from a trajectory of sin and death toward one of life and resurrection. While this view can raise questions in light of modern understandings of human origins, developments in Christology—such as deep incarnation—suggest that Christ’s work may be understood as renewing not just humanity, but creation itself.

Now, I want to conclude this series by turning to one of the oldest and most beloved atonement theories in Christian history: Christus Victor. While this series has not covered every possible perspective, these four approaches have had a profound influence on Christian thought.

So what is Christus Victor—and why might it be the fitting place to end?

Christus Victor (He is Risen!)

Theologian Gustaf Aulén famously argued in Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement that this view represents the “classical” understanding of the atonement in the early church.

Christus Victor begins with a different diagnosis of the human problem. Rather than focusing primarily on guilt or moral failure, it sees humanity—and indeed all of creation—as enslaved to the powers of sin, death, chaos, and the devil. In this view, the work of Christ is one of liberation. Jesus does not simply forgive sin; he defeats the powers that hold creation captive.

In many ways, this connects directly with the thought of Irenaeus of Lyons. For Irenaeus, recapitulation and Christus Victor are two sides of the same coin. In order for Christ to restore humanity to the divine life, he must also overcome the forces that have corrupted and enslaved it. Salvation, then, is both restoration and victory.

We can see this clearly in the way Jesus’s life mirrors and reverses the story of Adam. Where Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation of the serpent, Jesus resisted temptation in the wilderness. Where Adam and Eve grasped for power and autonomy, Jesus refuses to seize power and instead lifts up the vulnerable and the oppressed. Where Adam’s story ends in death and estrangement from God, Jesus’s story culminates in the defeat of death and the reconciliation of humanity to God.

In other words, where the powers of sin and death once conquered humanity, Christ enters into that very condition and conquers them as one of us. The resurrection is the final victory over darkness’s greatest weapon: death. And the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is now alive and active in each of us. We have the victory of Christ!

Pros and Cons of Christus Victor

One of the things I love about Christus Victor is that it offers one of the most coherent and expansive visions for why Jesus had to die. In this view, Christ’s death is not simply about addressing guilt, but about securing victory over sin, death, and the forces of chaos that entangle humanity in cycles of harm and destruction.

While I believe the atonement is multifaceted, I find myself returning to Christus Victor as a kind of center of gravity—one that helps make sense of the other theories. Rather than competing with them, it can be seen as encompassing them within a larger story of liberation and renewal.

For example, Christ’s victory over sin includes freedom from guilt and shame, which is expressed in the language of forgiveness (as emphasized in penal substitution). Likewise, Christ liberates us from sin not only by defeating its power, but by transforming us in love (as emphasized in the moral influence theory). In this way, these theories find their fulfillment within the broader victory of Christ.

On the other hand, critics point out that the cosmic framework assumed in Christus Victor can be difficult for modern audiences to fully embrace. Language about demonic forces and spiritual powers may feel foreign in a world where many realities once attributed to such forces are now understood through psychological or natural explanations.

Others worry that emphasizing the role of these powers risks diminishing human responsibility. If evil is primarily attributed to external forces, it can raise questions about how we account for our own participation in sin and systems of harm.

However, there are ways of understanding Christus Victor that either respond to these critiques or challenge the naturalistic assumptions behind them. I may explore a more contemporary interpretation of Christus Victor in a future article.

At its best, this view does not remove human responsibility, but situates it within a larger story—one in which both personal and systemic evil are ultimately overcome by the victory of Christ.

Conclusion

So why did Jesus have to die?

Throughout this series, we have explored several different answers to that question. Penal substitution reminds us that the cross speaks a word of forgiveness over our sin. Moral influence shows us that the cross transforms us through the power of divine love. Recapitulation reveals that in Christ, humanity’s story is being rewritten and restored to its intended purpose. And Christus Victor proclaims that through the cross and resurrection, the powers of sin and death have been defeated.

Each of these perspectives captures something true about the mystery of the atonement. And yet, none of them can fully contain it. The cross is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be encountered—a mystery that is deeper than any single explanation we can offer.

If we try to reduce the cross to only one of these ideas, we risk losing the fullness of what God has done in Christ. But if we allow them to speak together, we begin to see a richer picture emerge:

In Christ, we are forgiven.
In Christ, we are transformed.
In Christ, we are restored.
In Christ, we are set free.

The cross, then, is not just about what happens to Jesus—it is about what happens to us and to all of creation. It is where sin is forgiven, love is revealed, humanity is renewed, and the powers of death are overcome.

And so, as we celebrate the resurrection, we do so knowing that the cross was not the end of the story, but the turning point. What looked like defeat was, in truth, the victory of God. What looked like death has become the doorway to life.

In Christ, the story of the world is being made new. Thanks be to God!

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

In this series, I am exploring the atonement of Christ. The question of why Jesus had to die has drawn deep reflection throughout the history of the church. Atonement theories attempt to grapple with the mystery that somehow Jesus’s death saves us from sin and death. So far, we have explored two of these approaches.

The first was penal substitution, which answers the question by suggesting that God must punish sin. In this view, Jesus takes the place of sinful humanity, bearing the penalty we deserve so that we might receive his righteousness.

The second was the moral influence theory. This view argues that the cross is not about appeasing God, but about transforming us. As we behold the sacrificial love of Christ, we are moved to repentance and drawn into a life of love for God and neighbor.

While both of these theories speak a word of truth about the cross, they do not exhaust its meaning. As we enter into Good Friday, I want to explore another facet of the atonement: the Recapitulation Theory of Atonement (RTA).

Recapitulation Theory of Atonement (Jesus and the Birth of a New Creation)

This view is most closely associated with Irenaeus of Lyons, who taught that God did not create humanity in a state of full perfection, but as beings meant to grow into maturity. Humanity was created good, yet unfinished—like children intended to grow into the fullness of life with God.

However, rather than growing into this fullness through trust in God, humanity reached prematurely for divinity, attempting to define good and evil on its own terms. In doing so, we distorted our relationship with God, with one another, and with creation itself. Death, in this framework, is not primarily a legal punishment, but the natural consequence of this disordered way of being—of grasping for life apart from God, often through systems of power that exploit others.

Yet God does not abandon humanity. Instead, God patiently and persistently works to draw humanity back toward life and goodness. For Irenaeus of Lyons, the heart of the atonement is this: God became what we are, so that we might become what God is.

In Jesus Christ, God enters fully into the human story—not just at the cross, but from birth to death—re-living and restoring the human journey from the inside out. Where Adam’s disobedience set humanity on a trajectory toward sin and death, Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection redirect humanity toward life. Christ “recapitulates” humanity—summing it up, healing it, and setting it back on its proper course.

This leads to what theologians call deification (or theosis): the idea that salvation is not merely about forgiveness, but about full participation in the life of God. Humanity’s ultimate calling is to become like God—not in grasping for power, but in receiving and reflecting divine love.

Pros and Cons of RTA

Like the moral influence theory, the Recapitulation Theory of Atonement is deeply concerned with the transformation of the whole person. Humanity is not merely forgiven, but redirected—from a trajectory shaped by sin and death toward a life of communion with God.

In this view, Jesus fully enters into human life in order to heal it from within. Where Adam’s story ends in exile from God’s presence—and therefore separation from the life God intended—Jesus fulfills the vocation Adam was meant to embody. He lives in perfect trust and obedience to God, bringing order where there was disorder and reconciling humanity to God. In this way, Christ does not simply undo Adam’s failure; he completes humanity’s story by leading it into the life it was always meant to have.

One of the greatest strengths of this view is its scope. Salvation is not reduced to a single moment at the cross, but encompasses the whole life of Christ—his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection—as the means by which humanity is restored.

At the same time, one of the most common critiques of RTA is its reliance on the story of Adam in Genesis. Modern scientific understandings of human origins suggest that humanity did not descend from a single pair, but from a much larger population. If there is no historical Adam as the sole progenitor of the human race, then questions arise: What exactly is Christ “recapitulating”? How does Jesus undo a fall that may not have occurred in a literal, historical sense?

For some, this creates tension between the theological framework of recapitulation and contemporary understandings of human origins. Others respond by reading Adam not primarily as a single historical individual, but as a representative figure of humanity as a whole—one who reflects the universal human tendency to grasp for autonomy apart from God. In that sense, Christ’s work still holds: he recapitulates not just one person’s story, but the story of us all.

There have also been important developments in Christology, such as deep incarnation, which suggest that even if one does not hold to a literal Adam and Eve, Christ’s saving work can still be understood in cosmic terms. In this view, God in Christ enters not only into human life, but into the very fabric of creation itself. By taking on flesh within an evolutionary world, Christ participates in and transforms the story of creation by redirecting it from patterns of brokenness and death toward healing, hope, and flourishing.

Conclusion

I find the recapitulation theory of atonement deeply compelling. It centers the atonement on God’s desire for creation to fully participate in the divine life, with Jesus as the bridge between creation and God.

This vision offers a more expansive understanding of salvation. Rather than seeing salvation primarily as escaping punishment or gaining access to heaven, RTA invites us to see salvation as theosis—participation in the life of God through grace. In this view, creation is not simply rescued, but transformed. As we turn from patterns of sin and death toward lives shaped by love, hope, and communion with God, we begin to share in the life we were always created for.

So, as we remember Christ’s sacrifice on the cross this Good Friday, we do so with hope. In Christ, we are no longer bound to a trajectory of death. The story is being rewritten. Resurrection is on the horizon.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

In this series, I am exploring the atonement of Jesus Christ. Exploring atonement is essentially exploring the “why” of Jesus’s death. Why did Jesus die?

On one hand, we can point to the historical realities surrounding his death. The Roman Empire sought to crush any perceived threat to its authority, and if the Gospels are accurate about Jesus’s influence, it is not surprising that Rome would see him as dangerous. Likewise, the religious authorities of his day resisted him, as Jesus consistently challenged systems that preserved their power at the expense of others. Jesus had a real knack for pissing off powerful people and exposing systems that exploited the vulnerable.

But exploring the atonement looks beyond the mere fact that Jesus’s death was a consequence of confronting oppressive systems of power. Atonement asks a deeper question—not just why Jesus died, but what his death means.

In our last article, we explored one possible answer in the penal substitutionary theory of atonement (PSA). While I am no fan of PSA as a literal explanation of how Jesus atones for our sin, I did note that it carries something deeply important: the cross speaks a word of forgiveness over us. We need to know we are forgiven if we are to forgive others with abandon.

If, as we considered previously, God’s justice is restorative rather than merely punitive, then perhaps the cross is not about retribution, but about transformation.

Now, I want to shift to a more “subjective” understanding of atonement—one that focuses less on what changes in God, and more on what changes in us. If the cross is not primarily about satisfying God’s need to punish, then what is it doing? What if the power of the cross is not found in changing God’s posture toward us, but in changing our hearts toward God and one another?

Moral Influence Theory (Oh Love, How Great Thou Art)

The moral influence theory of atonement (from here on, MIT) is an approach that emphasizes how Jesus’s death saves us by transforming us as we behold the depth of his sacrificial love on the cross. Rather than focusing on what changes in God, MIT focuses on what changes in us.

This theory is most closely associated with Peter Abelard, who developed it in response to Anselm of Canterbury’s Satisfaction Theory of Atonement. In his commentary on Romans, Abelard writes:

“[I]n this we are justified in the blood of Christ and reconciled to God, that it was through this matchless grace shown to us that his Son received our nature, and in that nature, teaching us both by word and example, persevered to death and bound us to himself even more through love, so that when we have been kindled by so great a benefit of divine grace, true charity might fear to endure nothing for his sake.”

Abelard understood the primary work of the cross to be transformative—it beckons us to repent of our sin and move toward a deeper love for God and neighbor. The cross reveals a love so profound that it draws us in and reshapes us. MIT argues that there is no greater love than self-giving sacrifice, and that this kind of love transforms us from the inside out.

Jesus himself affirms this vision of love when he says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Likewise, 1 Peter 2:21 frames Christ’s suffering as an example for us to follow: “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” Scripture consistently points to the deeply transformative power of the cross (see also Philippians 2:5–8 and 1 John 4:9–11).

Pros and Cons of MIT

I personally love this theory. At its heart is the idea that humanity fails to image God fully in love, so God enters into our condition and suffers on the cross to show us what that love truly looks like. In Christ, we see a life fully oriented toward God and neighbor—a life marked by self-giving love even unto death.

As we behold that love, we are drawn into it and transformed by it. The love of Christ reshapes us so that we, in turn, begin to influence the world with that same love. It becomes a ripple effect: transformed people become agents of transformation. As Paul says, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”

The greatest strength of this view is its concern with the transformation of the whole person, not merely whether someone is legally justified before God. It takes seriously that salvation is not just about status, but about becoming people who love as God loves.

At the same time, the most common critique of MIT is that it can feel incomplete. While it speaks powerfully to personal and moral transformation, it does not clearly address the problem of death itself. Humanity may be transformed, but if death still reigns, has anything fundamentally changed? If the cross is only an example, critics ask, how does it actually defeat sin and death?

Conclusion

I believe Moral Influence Theory doesn’t get enough attention in the church today. Even if one finds it incomplete as a full account of the atonement, it remains an essential part of what it means to say that Jesus died for humanity.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Jesus had a way of upsetting powerful people who relied on exploitative systems. MIT reminds us that not only does Jesus’s death reveal God’s love—his life and ministry do as well. If Jesus shows love by confronting systems that oppress the most vulnerable, then the church is called to embody that same love today.

That may mean resisting those same powers in our own time. It may also mean repentance—especially in those moments when we have benefited from or participated in the very systems Christ came to challenge.

The cross, then, is not only something to believe in—it is something to follow. It is an invitation into a life shaped by sacrificial love, a love that moves us toward wholeness, transformation, and the courage to love as Christ loves.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

I am blessed to be a Christian educator at a PCUSA church. I get to teach some wonderful people, and I get to have enlightening and enriching theological discussions. One of the key discussions we have been having as of late is on Christ’s atonement. We have been doing a Lenten study using Adam Hamilton’s new book, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? In that book, Hamilton gives an overview of the different atonement theories and how they each offer a piece of the puzzle to Jesus’s saving work.

I want to quickly discuss the difference between the atonement itself and theories of atonement. Atonement (at-one-ment) is the salvific act of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross which deals with sin and death and somehow puts us right with God. Theories of atonement are metaphors that help us explain the mystery of how that happens.

Given that it is Holy Week, I thought it would be meaningful to explore these theories leading up to Easter Sunday. These different theories are all trying to grapple with the same reality: that God incarnate died on a cross. What would compel him to do such a thing? Why would God die for us?

God’s Wrath is Poured Out on the Cross

Arguably, the most famous atonement theory in the modern era is the idea that God, being just, must punish sin. So Jesus takes on the legal punishment that humanity deserves so that we can be declared righteous before a holy and just God. This view is called penal substitutionary atonement (PSA for short).

You have likely heard a version of this preached if you have attended a more Evangelical-leaning church. Preaching on this atonement theory often centers on the idea that we are sinful to our core and deserve judgment. Still, God, being merciful, sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins so we could have a clean slate before God and be justified in his sight.

Often, this theory argues that Jesus had to be fully human to pay the price for human sin, but also fully God, given that only God could pay in full the price for sinning against God. Therefore, Jesus must be God incarnate if he is to bear the penalty of human sin. In this view, God’s wrath against sin is satisfied at the cross.

To be fair, many thoughtful Christians hold more nuanced versions of this view—ones that emphasize God’s self-giving love in Christ rather than a picture of an angry God needing to be appeased. Even so, questions remain about how best to understand what is happening at the cross.

Problems with PSA

I am not a fan of PSA as a literal mechanism for how God saves us through the cross. I used to be an avid defender of this theory, and often claimed it as the central piece of the atonement upon which all the other theories would hang.

The first problem I have with it is that it can rest on the assumption that justice is ultimately punitive—that God must get a “pound of flesh” in order to forgive and justify us. That seems at odds with the way Christ speaks about justice. Jesus tells his followers that “an eye for an eye” is not the way, but instead calls us to turn the other cheek and forgive those who sin against us. He consistently forgives people without requiring retribution first.

Some would argue that forgiveness without justice risks minimizing the real harm of sin, and that God must take sin seriously in order to truly heal it. That is an important concern. But I struggle to see why taking sin seriously must require retribution before forgiveness can be offered. This assumes that justice is ultimately punitive rather than restorative. What if God’s justice is revealed not in retribution, but in the costly work of restoring both victim and oppressor through the cross?

Likewise, if God is the one being sinned against, then God retains the right to forgive without requiring punishment. If someone sins against me, I can choose to forgive them without demanding they suffer for it. In fact, we often recognize that as the more loving path. It seems strange to suggest that human beings can exercise a kind of mercy that God cannot.

Rethinking PSA

While I don’t find PSA compelling as a literal explanation for how salvation works, I do think it contains a powerful truth worth holding onto. The cross does speak a word of forgiveness over us.

What if the cross is not the place where God finally decides to forgive, but the place where God reveals that forgiveness has always been God’s posture toward us? What if it is not about satisfying God’s need to punish, but about demonstrating the lengths to which God will go to show us that we are loved and forgiven?

We all carry the scars of sin. We all feel the weight of guilt and shame for the harm we have caused. I know I have caused harm to people, and I have a difficult time forgiving myself. What I find meaningful in this understanding of the cross is that it becomes a declaration: that I am forgiven, that my sin does not separate me from God’s love, and that grace has the final word.

If God is willing to go to the cross to make that truth known, then perhaps the invitation is for us to begin to believe it—to forgive ourselves, and to extend that same grace to others.

Conclusion

Through Christ, we stand forgiven in the eyes of God. And if we are forgiven, then we are invited into lives shaped by repentance, grace, and the difficult work of forgiving others.

At the cross, we see the full display of human sin—violence, fear, and rejection—collide with the boundless love and mercy of God. Even there, Jesus does not respond with condemnation, but with forgiveness: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

The cross is not ultimately about God turning away from us, but about God refusing to abandon us—even at our worst. It is the clearest declaration we have that nothing, not even our sin, can separate us from the love of God.

In Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

Evangelicals often have a strained relationship with deconstruction. In 2022, John Cooper, frontman for the popular Christian rock band Skillet, told a crowd of thousands during a concert that:

I don’t hate those deconstructed Christians. I pray for their repentance. But listen, they have divorced themselves from God, and they want to take as many of you people as they can. And it is time for us and your generation to declare war on this idolatrous deconstruction Christian movement.

Voices within Christian apologetics, such as Alisa Childers and Frank Turek, have also been highly critical of deconstruction, often warning against what they see as its theological dangers. Childers, in particular, has argued that Progressive Christianity represents “another gospel” entirely, and that deconstruction is often the vehicle that leads Christians in that direction. In other words, in her view, deconstruction is not a movement toward truth, but away from it.

To be fair, many of these critiques are motivated by a sincere desire to preserve what is believed to be the truth of the Gospel. And yet, the tone and posture often reflect a deeper tension within conservative evangelicalism when it comes to engaging those who are questioning, rethinking, or reimagining their faith.

By deconstruction, I do not mean a wholesale abandonment of Christianity, though it can lead there for some. Rather, I mean the process of re-examining inherited beliefs—sometimes refining them, sometimes rejecting them, and often reshaping faith along the way.

So what’s going on here? Why does conservative evangelical Christianity so often respond to deconstruction with fear, hostility, or suspicion rather than curiosity or care?

I don’t think this tension comes from a single issue, but from a set of instincts and priorities that shape how faith is understood and protected. I want to suggest a few of them here.

1: Defending Doctrine is Most Important

One of the most significant factors is that, in many conservative evangelical spaces, Christianity is closely tied to preserving and defending a particular understanding of doctrine, sometimes at the expense of theological curiosity and exploration. When someone begins questioning that framework, it can be perceived not simply as exploration, but as departure.

For many, faith becomes deeply connected with holding correct beliefs about issues such as the inerrancy of Scripture, the atonement of Jesus, Hell and Heaven, the eschaton, and the nature of creation, among others. These are not insignificant matters. However, the challenge arises when non-essential doctrines are elevated to the level of essentials.

When this happens, disagreement no longer feels like dialogue—it feels like a drift toward heresy. The boundaries of “true Christianity” become tightly defined, and those who step outside of them, even in good faith, are often viewed as going down a slippery slope.

A few examples illustrate this tendency. Alisa Childers has argued that penal substitutionary atonement lies at the very heart of the Gospel, while Ken Ham has treated belief in young-earth creationism as a Gospel-level issue. In both cases, specific theological interpretations are elevated to a place of central importance.

When faith becomes primarily about defending a system, questions stop feeling like curiosity and start feeling like threats. And when questions feel like threats, it becomes incredibly difficult to respond with openness, humility, or charity toward those who are deconstructing.

2: Fear of Hell

Another factor lies in the belief, held by many conservative Christians, that deconstruction can ultimately lead to the abandonment of faith—and with that, the possibility of apostasy and eternal conscious torment in Hell. For many in conservative evangelical spaces, there is a genuine fear that if someone deconstructs into progressive Christianity or out of the faith entirely, they are placing themselves at risk of hellfire.

For those who hold this concern, deconstruction cannot be seen as a neutral process of theological exploration, but instead as a threat to be resisted. From within this framework, strong reactions are not necessarily rooted in hostility, but in a desire to protect. If Hell is real and eternal, then warning others—urgently and even forcefully—can feel like the most loving response.

And yet, this same framework can make it incredibly difficult to create spaces that honor wrestling with questions and doubts. When every doubt carries the weight of eternal consequences, curiosity begins to feel dangerous, and exploration can feel like a step toward ruin. In that kind of environment, deconstruction is not something to be understood, but something to be stopped.

3: Spiritual Arrogance

Another reason these spaces can become hostile to deconstruction is the presence of narratives that assume those who deconstruct are doing so for insincere or superficial reasons. For example, Matt Chandler has suggested that deconstruction is the “sexy” thing to do—implying that people are motivated by trendiness or a desire for cultural approval. Similarly, Josh Butler, writing for The Gospel Coalition, argues:

Deconstruction is poison, not medicine. It supplements the sin that’s killing you, rather than healing it. It allows you to save face, to look virtuous in your departure from God (“He’s the problem, not me”), while distracting you from squarely facing your true motivations.1

These kinds of claims often reflect a deeper posture that can be described as spiritual arrogance. The underlying assumption is that no sincere, faithful Christian would rationally reject their particular theological system. Therefore, if someone does walk away or begin to question it, the cause must be something else—hidden sin, cultural pressure, or a desire for self-justification.

But when that assumption is in place, genuine engagement becomes nearly impossible. If someone’s doubts are dismissed as insincere from the outset, then their questions, frustrations, and even their grief are never truly heard. Instead of being met with curiosity or compassion, they are met with suspicion.

And when people feel that they are not being taken seriously, meaningful conversation breaks down before it even begins.

What is the Solution?

There are a multitude of reasons why conservative evangelical churches often struggle to minister to those who are deconstructing. I want to acknowledge that this is not an easy tension to navigate. There is a real challenge in holding fast to what you believe is true while also loving those who are questioning or even rejecting those same beliefs—especially when those beliefs feel central and of utmost importance.

And yet, if there is any path forward, it begins here: no one who is deconstructing is going to truly hear someone who is not first willing to listen to them with empathy and a genuine desire to understand. Without that foundation, even the most well-intentioned responses will fall flat.

If the default posture toward deconstruction is one of hostility or suspicion, then those walking through doubt will not experience the church as a safe place to bring their questions, fears, or struggles. And when people do not feel safe, they do not open up—they withdraw.

But when people are met with patience, humility, and compassion, something different becomes possible. Conversations deepen. Trust begins to form. And even in disagreement, there is space for honesty, growth, and, perhaps, a more enduring faith.

Likewise, instead of seeing deconstruction as something dangerous, maybe see it as an invitation to deepen faith and pursue truth. A God who can handle torture and death on a cross can surely handle our doubts, our questions, and our search for truth and honesty.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

Christians disagree on many things, from which theory of the atonement is correct to what the proper view of the eschaton might be. One thing they don’t disagree on, however, is the universality of sin in the world. We are steeped in brokenness and disorder. The second we turn on the news, we are painfully reminded of the suffering in our world caused by human self-centeredness and our desire to seize power at the expense of our fellow creatures. War-mongering, starvation, genocide, human trafficking, rampant sexual abuse—the list goes on and on. Honestly, it is often too much for our systems to handle.

But the chaos that threatens the goodness of God’s creation isn’t just out there somewhere; it is also here around us and within us. We live in societies where power and wealth often shape decisions more than the well-being of ordinary people. We live in communities embedded in cycles of harm, trauma, and violence. I see this every time a homeless person comes to the church door looking for food just to make it through the day. We grow up in homes where the unresolved trauma of one generation spills into the next. Trauma begets trauma. Hurt people hurt people. Wounds multiply.

We all carry wounds. Some of us carry very deep ones, and those wounds can fester into hatred and bitterness if left unattended. So what do we do with this reality? What do we do when we realize that we live in a broken world that often looks less like the creation of a loving God and more like the work of a malevolent deity?

Lent As Resistance

The church is currently in the season of Lent—that forty-day season when we journey with Jesus toward the cross on Good Friday and the resurrection on Easter Sunday. It begins with Ash Wednesday, when we receive the sign of the cross in ashes and are reminded of our mortality and our brokenness. This reminder is fitting, because many of us who live relatively comfortable lives can go through our days oblivious to the hurt of those around us and even to the wounds we ourselves carry.

Lent is a time for reflection, prayer, and, dare I say, resistance. We must resist the chaos in our world, and we do that by carrying a wounded hope. A wounded hope is a hope that acknowledges and wrestles with the wounds we carry. It recognizes the cycles of harm and exhaustion we live in, yet still clings to the conviction that God is at work restoring us and drawing goodness out of our broken lives.

What if it is True?

Rachel Held Evans once wrote that, “The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God’s name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.”

What would happen if we truly cultivated in our hearts the truth that God is loving and genuinely desires to lead us into an abundant life? What if we seriously wrestled with the possibility that God is moving in us and through us, drawing us by grace to become agents of wholeness in a wounded world? What if we truly believed that every single person is, in fact, beloved by God? What if we lived as people who stand completely forgiven for our sins and mistakes?

One of the reasons I remain a Christian is because I believe the story it tells is worth believing. When we begin to see the world through the lens of Christianity, the narratives of darkness, loneliness, and hopelessness that so often entangle our world are resisted by a deeper truth: there is a good and loving God who died on the cross. A God who entered into our darkness, loneliness, and hopelessness. A God who loves us unconditionally and continually invites us into new possibilities of wholeness and flourishing.

Embodying these convictions is how we hold onto a wounded hope. Wounded hope grows from the conviction that God’s love and goodness are just as real as the wounds we carry. It is the belief that God is with us in those dark places and is never ashamed of our imperfections, our mistakes, or our inability to fully give and receive love.

What Do We Do With a Broken World?

We resist that brokenness by embracing a wounded hope. And that can be quite challenging, especially when we live in a society—and, unfortunately, often a church culture—that suggests our worth, our value, and even the faithfulness of our spirituality is measured by how neat and productive our lives appear from the outside.

In other words, we often associate spiritual flourishing with how well we are able to hold it all together.

This is why so many people come to church with a painted smile on their face and a forced hallelujah on their lips. We don’t want the mask to slip. We don’t want others to see how broken, how lonely, how anxious, or how depressed we might really be.

Wearing that mask only compounds the exhaustion we already feel. Truthfully, wounded hope begins with realizing that God doesn’t just love the put-together version of you that seems to meet some imagined spiritual standard. God loves the anxious, depressed, messy, hurt, wounded version of you—the one who might be holding onto faith by a thread. Trusting that love is how we hold onto hope even when things feel like they are unraveling around us and within us.

Chaos whispers in our hearts, our minds, and our souls, telling us that this is all too much for us to handle. And the truth is, it is too much for us to handle—because we were never meant to carry it alone. The good news of the Christian story is that we aren’t alone. God is with us and always has been. And if we truly believe that—really believe it—then perhaps that same abiding Spirit will prompt us to become a hopeful presence for another wounded soul.

Conclusion

Lent invites us to put down the masks we so often wear and to be honest about the wounds we carry. It is a season where we stop pretending that everything is fine and instead bring our anxiety, our grief, and our brokenness before God. In doing so, we discover something surprising: God was never waiting for the polished version of us. God has always been present with the wounded one.

The Christian story reminds us that God does not stand far away from our suffering. In Jesus, God enters directly into it—into the chaos, the loneliness, and the darkness that so often overwhelm us. And from within that darkness, God begins the slow and patient work of restoration.

So during this Lenten season, perhaps the invitation is simple: to let go of the exhausting work of pretending we have it all together and instead learn to carry a wounded hope. A hope rooted in the conviction that God’s love is real, that God is with us in the depths of our wounds, and that even now God is drawing new life from places that feel beyond repair.

Even taking a small step toward embracing that truth is a quiet act of resistance against the narratives that lead us into despair.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

Sola Scriptura is a term that is a hallmark of the Protestant Reformation, given that it affirms Scripture as being the ultimate authority over the church’s teachings. Many believe Luther coined the term, but it seems that Marsilius of Padua (1270-1342) was the first to use the phrase in theological discussion.1 According to Witherington, “Marsilius is clear that the Scriptures are the ultimate source of authority and that they do not derive their authority from the church. To the contrary, the church gets its authority from the Scriptures.”2

Sola Scriptura is a Latin phrase meaning “Scripture Alone” and refers to the idea that the Bible alone is the ultimate authority for what the church should believe, teach, and practice. Sola Scriptura argues that the Bible should be given primacy over church tradition, reason, and lived experience as authorities in matters of faith. As a protestant who is getting ordained in a mainline protestant denomination, I have a good bit of interest in whether Sola Scriptura is coherent, and, by default, the role of Scripture in the teachings and faith of the church.

The question I want to explore in this article is, “Is Sola Scriptura a useful theological paradigm for thinking about the Bible as it relates to the theology and practice of the church?”

Sola Scriptura and the Problem of Inerrancy

Sola Scriptura, as taught by most protestants, seems to rest on the Bible being infallible and inerrant. Infallibility and inerrancy are not the same thing and can be distinguished. Infallibility argues that while the Bible may have historical or scientific errors, it is completely trustworthy in matters of faith and salvation.3 Inerrancy, on the other hand, argues that the Bible is without error in all that it teaches, regardless of subject matter in history, science, ethics, and theology. 4

Naturally, if either of these propositions is false, then Sola Scriptura becomes more problematic, given that an untrustworthy Bible potentially poses problems to its authority within the church. I have written a different article giving an overview of the different views of Biblical inspiration, along with supposed problems with both inerrancy and infallibility.5 I won’t go over those same points here. Instead, I want to look at whether Sola Scriptura necessitates either infallibility or inerrancy.

I would argue it certainly necessitates divine inspiration, such that divine revelation was revealed by God to humanity and was written in Scripture. I would also argue that it seems to necessitate infallibility, given that if Scripture is wrong on core Christian doctrine, then it cannot be authoritative for the teachings of the church.

However, I am not sure it necessitates inerrancy. I think one could argue that the Bible could contain errors in matters of history, science, or even morality, while still maintaining ultimate authority for the church regarding core theology and doctrine.

With that said, if it is not inerrant, then one could question why we should trust the Bible on matters of doctrine if it can be wrong about other things. This is why Sola Scriptura is often seen as going hand in hand with inerrancy.

This brings us to the question of whether inerrancy makes sense. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy provides the most complete confession of Evangelical Protestant views on inerrancy. Witherington, reflecting on the Chicago Statement, says:

The remark in the Chicago Statement about “whatever the Scripture touches” doesn’t reckon sufficiently with things like the use of phenomenological language, where modern scientific claims are not being made about cosmology, anthropology, and other such scientific topics. Nor does it reckon with what we have said earlier about the Psalms revealing truthfully what is in the heart of human beings, not necessarily what is in the heart of God. Nor does it deal with reports of errors and lies made by some of the characters in Scripture. We can say they are truthful reports about lies, but then that means that not all the things mentioned in Scripture are true in the pure sense of that term.6

In other words, what may be classified as “errors” aren’t actually errors so long as we are reading Scripture in its historical/cultural context. John H. Walton argues similarly that, “Accommodation takes place primarily at the locutionary level. Inerrancy and authority are related to the illocution; accommodation and genre attach to the locution.”7 The illocution is the intended message the author wishes to express, while locutions are the forms in which that message is accommodated to an audience. For example, the point of the parable of the mustard seed is not to teach botany, meaning it is not an error when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest, but Jesus accommodates his audience by using their understanding of botany to get across inerrant theological truths.

The problem with this is: who gets to decide what is illocution and what is locution? How do we properly determine what God’s intended message is versus what is an accommodation to an ancient audience? Even if we grant that inerrancy should be reserved for the author’s intended message, we must still interpret what that intended message is.

And this leads me to my greatest problem with inerrancy. It is only helpful if our interpretation is also inerrant, which it clearly is not. If inerrancy is necessary for Sola Scriptura to stand, then our confidence in Sola Scriptura is only as strong as our confidence in our own interpretation.

And history makes one thing painfully obvious: Christians disagree — often deeply — about what Scripture intends to say.

Is Sola Scriptura Useful?

I have laid out the problem of inerrancy not to dismiss Scripture, but to highlight a deeper issue with the idea of “Scripture Alone.” Scripture is always interpreted. And historically, the interpretation of Scripture has always involved a careful dance between tradition, reason, and lived experience.

One can certainly argue that Scripture is the prime authority for Christian doctrine, since the church’s theology emerges from wrestling with its texts.

But those doctrines have been shaped through thousands of years of tradition and interpretive reflection.

That tradition, in turn, has been examined and refined through reason as the church has asked whether its doctrines are internally coherent and whether they cohere with what we know of reality through other forms of inquiry — science, philosophy, and historical research. Galileo Galilei, for instance, forced the church to reconsider long-held interpretations of Scripture that supported geocentrism. The biblical text did not change; our understanding of the world did, and that shift reshaped how the text was read.

Finally, theology is filtered through lived experience. As we discern how doctrine impacts real people in real communities, new questions emerge. The lived reality of women empowered by the Spirit to preach, teach, and lead, for example, has prompted many churches to revisit interpretations of passages that appear to prohibit them from doing so. Experience does not override Scripture — but it does press us to reexamine how we have understood it.

These authoritative threads are never isolated. They are interwoven. They exist in constant dialogue. Scripture informs tradition. Tradition guides interpretation. Reason tests coherence. Experience raises fresh questions. And through this ongoing interaction, the church seeks to discern how the Bible speaks authoritatively to its faith, teaching, and practice.

It is for this reason that I find Sola Scriptura, at least as it is commonly framed in many Evangelical Protestant contexts, to be an unhelpful paradigm for theological reflection in the church. Not because Scripture lacks authority, but because the language of “alone” obscures the reality that Scripture’s authority is always mediated through the very tools it is said to stand above.

Conclusion

I remain convinced that the Bible is inspired by God and authoritative for the life and faith of the church. Scripture is not disposable, negotiable, or secondary. It is the church’s primary witness to God’s self-revelation.

However, as a Protestant, I have come to believe that Sola Scriptura, as commonly articulated, is ultimately incoherent. Not because Scripture lacks authority, but because authority is never exercised in isolation. Tradition, reason, and lived experience are not optional add-ons to biblical interpretation — they are the unavoidable conditions under which interpretation happens at all.

For that reason, Scripture cannot meaningfully stand alone as an authority in the life of the church. Nor can it stand completely above tradition, reason, and experience in the way the slogan sometimes implies, because we inevitably rely on those very tools to determine how Scripture stands above them.

While Scripture remains the prime source and norm for Christian doctrine, its authority is always mediated. It is read in community. It is interpreted through inherited theological frameworks. It is assessed for coherence. It is wrestled with in light of lived reality.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

We now arrive at what is arguably the most difficult tension between science and Christian faith: the problem of animal suffering and natural evil. The problem of natural evil argues that if God is all-loving and all-powerful, then God would prevent, or at least significantly reduce, suffering caused by natural processes such as earthquakes, hurricanes, disease, and predation.

This challenge is often framed as the evidential problem of natural evil. Rather than claiming that God’s existence is logically impossible, it argues that the scale and apparent pointlessness of suffering make the existence of an all-loving, all-powerful God deeply improbable. The argument can be stated as follows:

1. Gratuitous suffering occurs in the natural world through natural processes such as earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases like cancer, and animal predation.

2. If God were all-powerful, there would be no constraint preventing God from eliminating gratuitous suffering caused by natural evil.

3. If God were all-loving, God would desire to eliminate gratuitous suffering as far as it were possible to do so.

4. Therefore, if gratuitous suffering exists, God is either not all-powerful, not all-loving, or does not exist.

By gratuitous suffering, we mean suffering that does not contribute to any greater good, nor does it prevent or limit some greater evil. In other words, it appears pointless. While Christians may respond that God has good reasons for allowing suffering in general, many would argue that suffering that serves no discernible redemptive, moral, or eschatological purpose sits uneasily with a God who is both perfectly good and perfectly powerful.

Evolution further intensifies the problem of gratuitous suffering, since it is the very process by which biological life diversified and increased in complexity. As Charles Darwin himself recognized, evolutionary theory entails suffering not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a central feature of the process. The struggle for existence—marked by predation, extinction, and competition—is precisely what drives adaptation and complexity.1

For many, the idea that God would providentially employ such a process is deeply troubling, especially given the vast number of creatures who suffer and perish without ever “winning” the evolutionary arms race. Countless organisms live short, painful lives only to be eliminated by forces entirely beyond their control. This raises a pressing theological question: how can such widespread, apparently pointless suffering be reconciled with a God who is both loving and powerful?

Theologian Bethany Sollereder captures the emotional and moral force of this problem when she writes:

*How is God’s love expressed in the intense suffering of a young fawn, brought down by a predator or, worse still, accidentally burnt alive in a forest fire… Is the project of creation worth the risk of even one innocent creature who suffers and dies in agony?*2

If evolution is indeed the means by which God creates, then animal suffering is not a temporary deviation from God’s purposes but woven into the fabric of creation itself. This reality places significant pressure on traditional accounts of divine goodness and providence.

The Challenge of Theodicy

Any Christian theist who seeks to integrate modern science with Christian theology must ultimately grapple with the evidential problem of natural evil and animal suffering. Unlike the problem of moral evil—which concerns suffering caused by the actions of moral agents—natural evil arises from impersonal processes such as disease, disaster, and predation. While Christian theology has long reflected on moral evil, theodicies addressing natural evil, especially in light of modern science, remain less fully developed.

A theodicy attempts to offer morally sufficient reasons—whether actual or potential—for why God would permit evil and suffering in the world. In the context of evolution and deep time, this task becomes especially demanding. If suffering is not merely an unfortunate consequence of human sin but a persistent feature of the natural order itself, then any science-affirming Christian account of God must explain how such suffering can be reconciled with divine goodness and power.

In the coming articles, I will engage a range of Christian theodicies. At this stage, however, I want to focus on several commonly offered theodicies and defenses that, I believe, fall short of providing a satisfying response to the problem of natural evil and animal suffering.

Skeptical Theism

Skeptical theism (ST) is a common response to the evidential problem of evil that seeks to undermine the claim that gratuitous evil exists. Brian Leftow has even argued that ST provides an effective counter to the evidential problem of evil.3 Broadly stated, skeptical theism emphasizes the profound epistemic gap between divine and human knowledge. As Nick Trakakis explains, ST holds that “there exists a great epistemic gulf between God and humanity, so that various aspects of God—such as his will, intentions, and goals—are bound to strike us as mysterious.”4

Michael Rea sharpens this claim by arguing that ST entails the following principle:

*(ST) No human being is ever justified (or warranted, or reasonable) in thinking the following about any evil e that has ever occurred: there is (or is probably) no reason that could justify God in permitting e.*5

A familiar analogy often used in support of ST is that of a parent allowing a child to receive a painful medical injection. While the child may experience the needle as pointless suffering, the parent knows that the momentary pain serves a greater good. Likewise, skeptical theism maintains that human beings, given our finite and embodied perspective, are not in a position to judge whether particular instances of suffering are truly gratuitous. There may exist goods—possibly eternal goods—far beyond our cognitive horizon that justify God’s permission of such evils. On this view, the infinite gap between divine and human knowledge undermines our epistemic confidence in judging any evil to be genuinely pointless.

While skeptical theism directly challenges the assumption that humans can identify gratuitous evil, it carries significant philosophical and theological costs. First, ST threatens to undermine our basic moral intuitions in the face of suffering. Laura Ekstrom articulates a widely accepted epistemic principle: “If it seems to a person that something is the case, then that person is prima facie justified in believing that it is the case.”6 Such justification can, of course, be defeated if further evidence shows the belief to be mistaken. However, the skeptical theist owes us a substantive reason for doubting our intuitions about apparently pointless suffering, rather than merely asserting that those intuitions might be wrong.

Theologically, this skepticism cuts against important Christian commitments. While Scripture affirms a real epistemic gulf between God and humanity, it also teaches that human beings are made in the image of God and that God has written his law on the human heart. If our moral intuitions are so unreliable that we cannot meaningfully judge whether suffering is truly evil—despite its apparent pointlessness—then it becomes unclear why we should trust those same intuitions when evaluating other theological claims about God, goodness, or creation. In attempting to defend divine goodness, skeptical theism risks eroding the very moral framework that makes such a defense intelligible.

Finally, skeptical theism rests on a prior theological assumption: that God’s omnipotence and goodness entail that God would never permit genuinely gratuitous evil. On this view, the appeal to an epistemic gulf between God and humanity is not grounded in any independent assessment of human moral intuition or reasoning, but rather in a specific interpretation of God’s character and attributes. The skeptical conclusion follows not from an analysis of our epistemic limitations as such, but from a theological commitment that gratuitous evil is incompatible with a good and omnipotent God.

Yet it is not obvious that divine omnipotence and goodness are necessarily in conflict with the existence of gratuitous evil. If a coherent account can be given in which an all-powerful and perfectly good God permits genuinely gratuitous suffering, then the primary motivation for adopting skeptical theism dissolves. In that case, the appeal to radical epistemic skepticism would be unnecessary.

Neo-Cartesianism

Another response that seeks to undermine the first premise of the evidential argument—namely, that gratuitous evil exists in the world—is Neo-Cartesianism (N-C). Neo-Cartesianism holds that non-human animals lack certain human capacities required for consciously experienced suffering. On this view, while animals may exhibit pain-like behavior, they do not experience pain in a morally significant sense.7

Neo-Cartesians therefore argue that empirical evidence pointing to similarities between human and non-human animal neurobiology is insufficient to establish that animals genuinely suffer. According to this position, neurological resemblance does not entail phenomenological equivalence. Michael Murray, for example, suggests that similarities in brain structures—such as the presence of a prefrontal cortex in both humans and other mammals—do not necessarily indicate similar mental states. Despite surface-level overlap, there remain substantial neurological and cognitive differences between humans and non-human animals. These differences, Murray argues, may indicate that animals lack the affective pathways required for the unpleasant, consciously felt dimension of pain, even if they respond behaviorally to noxious stimuli.8

There are several significant problems with Neo-Cartesianism. First, much like skeptical theism, N-C runs against deeply entrenched common-sense intuitions about animal pain.9 While this does not by itself render the position false, it does place a burden of proof on the Neo-Cartesian. Adequate reasons must be given for rejecting our prima facie justification for believing that animals experience pain in a morally significant sense.

Second, Neo-Cartesianism is highly speculative and appears to be undercut by a growing body of scientific research. For example, a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that vertebrates, especially mammals and birds, can reliably discriminate between painful and non-painful stimuli, a capacity that strongly suggests conscious awareness of pain.10 Rather than positing complex alternative explanations for this behavior, Occam’s razor favors the more straightforward account: animals avoid harmful stimuli because they experience those stimuli as unpleasant. By contrast, the Neo-Cartesian proposal that animals do not actually feel pain, but merely respond to noxious stimuli through non-conscious evolutionary mechanisms, introduces unnecessary explanatory complexity without corresponding empirical support.

Adamic Fall

I now turn to a more traditional theodicy offered to explain why the natural world appears so broken: the claim that nature itself is fallen as a result of Adam’s sin. Many Christians throughout church history have understood the destructive forces of nature to be a direct consequence of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. On this view, natural disasters, disease, and animal suffering are not part of God’s original creative intent but are instead the result of human rebellion.

John Calvin articulated this perspective clearly when he wrote that “all the evils of the present life, which experience proves to be innumerable, have proceeded from the same fountain. The inclemency of the air, frost, thunder, unseasonable rains, drought, hail, and whatever is disorderly in the world, are the fruits of sin.”11 This understanding of nature as morally disordered has persisted into the modern period, particularly within the fundamentalist strand of Christianity known as young-earth creationism (YEC). Contemporary YEC theologian Hans Madueme echoes Calvin’s view, arguing that God’s original creation was “not fragile” and that all evil in the world results from “God’s judicial response to the broken commandment—the divine curse of Genesis 3:17.”12

There are several problems with this account. Most immediately, the scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that death, disease, and suffering existed for millions of years prior to the emergence of human beings. If one seeks a theological explanation of natural evil and animal suffering that is consistent with modern science, then the Adamic Fall as a causal explanation for natural disorder cannot bear that weight.

Second, the biblical support for this view is far less explicit than is often assumed. Nowhere in Genesis are we told that creation was originally perfect, immutable, or free from all forms of suffering. While many Christians read the descriptions of creation as “good” and “very good” to imply a state of perfection, the Hebrew term tov more commonly denotes that something is functioning as intended or is morally fitting. In its literary context, tov refers to the ordered goodness of creation as God brings form and structure out of chaos, not to an absence of vulnerability, death, or creaturely limitation.

Appeals to passages such as Romans 8:22 or Genesis 3:17 likewise fail to decisively support an Adamic fall of nature. Romans 8 admits of multiple plausible interpretations, one of which is that creation “groans” not because it was ontologically corrupted by Adam’s sin, but because it is the arena in which human sin continues to wreak havoc. Environmental degradation, exploitation, and ecological violence offer concrete examples of how creation suffers precisely because of ongoing human wrongdoing, rather than as the result of a primordial curse imposed upon nature itself.

Similarly, Genesis 3:17 does not state that the curse involves a fundamental alteration of the ontology of nature such that suffering and death are newly introduced into creation. In fact, the text may even presuppose the presence of danger and resistance within creation prior to human sin. For example, God’s command in Genesis 1 for humanity to “rule” and “have dominion” employs language that elsewhere in Scripture is frequently associated with subduing opposition or engaging in conquest.

If such terms typically evoke imagery of struggle rather than effortless stewardship, then it is plausible that humanity’s original vocation involved risk, resistance, and vulnerability. On this reading, the human task was never merely the peaceful maintenance of a perfectly ordered garden, but participation in the ongoing ordering of a creation that was good, yet not fully ordered towards the shalom of God.

Finally, this view raises a serious concern about divine justice. On the Adamic Fall account, non-human creatures are subjected to suffering not because of their own actions, but as a consequence of the sins of other moral agents. In effect, innocent creatures are caught up in a punitive system aimed elsewhere.

To illustrate the moral tension, imagine someone committing a wrongdoing and being told, “As punishment for your actions, I will torture your pets.” We would not regard such a response as good or just, even if the person being punished bears genuine responsibility for their actions. The intuition behind this judgment is difficult to dismiss, and it casts doubt on a theodicy that explains animal suffering primarily as divine punishment for human sin.

Conclusion

In the next installment of this series, I will begin exploring alternative approaches that, in my view, offer more compelling ways of addressing the problem of animal suffering and natural evil. The series will culminate in a presentation of my own position, developed in my ThM thesis at Asbury, which I call a Redemptive Flourishing Theodicy.

For now, my aim has been more modest. I have sought to show that several commonly offered responses—even those that are widely assumed to be sufficient within Christian discourse—face serious philosophical, scientific, and theological difficulties. These approaches have been advanced by respected Christian philosophers, theologians, and apologists, ranging from William Lane Craig and C.S. Lewis to Ken Ham. Yet popularity and pedigree do not guarantee adequacy. In my judgment, these responses struggle to withstand careful scrutiny, and given the availability of more coherent alternatives, there is little reason to continue relying on them as primary explanations of natural evil and animal suffering.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

In this new series, I will be giving a simple overview of some of the most prominent debates happening in contemporary theological discourse. The goal is to inform readers about the topic at hand, outline the major views, explore their strengths and weaknesses, and then explain my own position and why I find it most compelling.

I want to begin this theology counterpoint series with a somewhat controversial subject: hell.

The doctrine of hell in Christian theology is one of those topics that pastors either love preaching on (you know, the fire-and-brimstone types) or avoid altogether. And while one particular view of hell has largely dominated Western Christian theology for centuries, this does not mean that it is the only view Christians have held or debated throughout church history.

Broadly speaking, there are three major views of hell that have been discussed within the Christian tradition. This does not mean there are no other variations or minority positions, but for the sake of clarity, I will focus on the three most commonly debated views:

• Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT)

• Annihilationism, often called Conditional Immortality (CI)

• Universal Reconciliation (UR)

Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT)

A Biblical Defense

Eternal Conscious Torment is the view that unrepentant sinners will experience endless, conscious suffering after death as punishment for their sin. This view is widely held among Christians today and has dominated much of Western Christian theology since Augustine in the fourth century C.E. While elements of ECT existed earlier, Augustine’s influence played a significant role in solidifying it as the prevailing view in Latin Christianity. Prior to and alongside this development, both Conditional Immortality and Universal Reconciliation were also present and actively debated within the early church, particularly in Eastern contexts.

Because of ECT’s historical and contemporary influence, it makes sense to begin here.

There are several biblical texts commonly appealed to in defense of ECT. Below are some of the most frequently cited passages:

Matthew 25:41–46

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…’
…‘Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.’” (NIV)

This passage is often cited due to the parallel language between eternal punishment and eternal life, which many interpret as implying equal duration.

Luke 16:22–26

“In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side…” (NIV)

This parable of the rich man and Lazarus is commonly understood as depicting conscious torment after death, with an unbridgeable separation between the righteous and the wicked.

Revelation 20:10

“They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” (NIV)

A few verses later, we read that those whose names are not found in the book of life are also thrown into the lake of fire (v. 15). Because this passage explicitly describes ongoing torment, it is often seen as one of the strongest biblical supports for ECT.

While other passages refer to eternal fire, destruction, or judgment (e.g., 2 Thessalonians 1:5–10; Jude 7; Mark 9:42–48), these texts are more debated and, as we will see later in the series, can reasonably be interpreted in different ways. I have chosen these passages because they are typically regarded as the clearest biblical representatives of the ECT position.

A Theological and Philosophical Defense

One of the most common philosophical arguments for ECT appeals to the value of the one sinned against.

Imagine you visit an old junkyard and find a rusted, broken-down car missing wheels and an engine. Having had a rough day, you take a baseball bat and put a few dents in it, knocking off a mirror in the process. The junkyard owner catches you and demands compensation. How much would you owe? Probably not much—perhaps a few hundred dollars.

Now imagine doing the same thing to a brand-new Ford Mustang. The action is identical, but the cost would be dramatically higher. Why? Because the value of the object violated determines the severity of the offense and the punishment.

Applied theologically, the argument goes like this: if sin against a finite being warrants finite punishment, then sin against an infinite and perfectly good God warrants punishment of infinite severity. In this view, eternal punishment is not unjust because the offense is not merely measured by time, but by the worth of the one offended.

Another theological argument often associated with ECT is famously articulated by C.S. Lewis: “The gates of hell are locked from the inside.” According to this view, God’s love and grace continue to be extended even to those in hell, but the damned freely and persistently reject it. Over time, their character becomes so entrenched in rebellion that repentance becomes impossible—not because God withholds mercy, but because the individual no longer desires it.

A Critique of Eternal Conscious Torment

While Eternal Conscious Torment has significant biblical and philosophical support, it also faces serious exegetical, moral, and theological challenges. I have offered a more extensive critique elsewhere, but here I will briefly outline several objections that I believe are particularly weighty.

First, the Greek word translated as eternal (αἰώνιος) does not always refer to unending duration. While it can mean “everlasting,” it can also refer to belonging to the age to come, or to something divine or otherworldly in quality. In some contexts, the emphasis may be on the nature or source of the punishment rather than its length. This does not automatically rule out ECT, but it does mean that appeals to the word “eternal” alone are not as decisive as they are often assumed to be.

Second, the biblical witness as a whole presents multiple images and descriptions of divine judgment. Some passages speak of destruction, death, or perishing rather than ongoing torment. This diversity does not negate ECT, but it does suggest that Scripture is not as unambiguous on the mechanics of final judgment as is sometimes claimed. Any responsible theological position must wrestle with the full range of biblical data.

Third, there is the moral challenge. A God who is perfectly loving and just would seemingly not subject people to endless conscious torment for sins committed within a finite lifetime. If any human authority were to impose such a punishment, we would rightly regard it as grotesquely unjust. If our moral intuitions about goodness, justice, and love are grounded in God’s own character, then it is difficult to see how ECT coheres with those very attributes.

Building on this, if eternal conscious torment can be described as good, just, or loving, then those terms begin to lose their meaning. If the most extreme form of suffering imaginable qualifies as loving justice, then the distinction between good and evil becomes blurred and morally unstable.

There is also the question of grace and forgiveness. Those who are sinned against retain the right to extend or withhold mercy. Even if one grants the argument that sin against an infinite being warrants infinite punishment, it does not follow that such punishment must be enacted. An infinite and perfectly good God could freely choose to forgive and extend grace to the offender, rather than subject them to eternal punishment. Justice does not logically require the absence of mercy—particularly for a God whose defining attributes include love and grace.

Additionally, the human moral and religious situation is marked by profound ambiguity. As Paul notes, “we see through a glass dimly.” An omniscient God would fully know the limitations of human understanding, the distortions caused by culture, trauma, misinformation, and sincere error, and the unequal access people have to truth. A truly good and just God would take such factors into account when judging human lives. It is difficult to envision divine goodness as eternally condemning someone for failing to repent when they lacked the clarity, opportunity, or full understanding necessary to do so during their lifetime.

Finally, there is the question of divine omnipotence. An all-powerful God would seemingly have other options besides eternally tormenting the wicked. God could annihilate evil altogether or remove the freedom of those who perpetually reject him. In human contexts, we often restrict freedom when individuals consistently harm themselves or others—and we consider doing so an act of compassion. If this is true on a human level, it raises serious questions about why eternal torment would be the most just or loving course of action for God.

Annihilationism / Conditional Immortality (CI)

A Biblical Defense

Conditional Immortality (CI), sometimes called Annihilationism, is the view that while God may punish the wicked after death, their existence will ultimately come to an end. Rather than enduring eternal conscious torment, the unrepentant are finally and completely destroyed as the consequence of their sin.

The biblical case for CI is generally built around two core principles.
First, human beings are not inherently immortal; immortality is a gift granted by God, not an intrinsic property of the soul.
Second, the ultimate punishment for sin is destruction, not perpetual torment.

Genesis 3:22

“And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’” (NIV)

This passage suggests that humanity is not naturally immortal and must depend on God’s sustaining gift of life in order to live forever. There are even hints in the text that the human soul was always mortal, even prior to the fall. If Adam and Eve were inherently immortal, the tree of life would appear unnecessary. Immortality, then, is portrayed as something contingent upon God’s provision rather than an automatic feature of human nature.

Matthew 10:28

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (NIV)

Here, Jesus speaks of God’s ability to destroy both body and soul in hell. CI proponents argue that this language points toward the mortality of the soul and frames hell not as a place of endless torment, but as the arena of final destruction.

2 Thessalonians 1:8–9

“They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” (NIV)

Once again, the punishment described is destruction. While the destruction is described as everlasting in its effect, the text does not explicitly suggest ongoing conscious torment. Rather, it implies a punishment that is final and irreversible.

Philippians 3:18–19

“Their destiny is destruction…” (NIV)

Paul describes the ultimate fate of those who live as enemies of the cross not as torment, but as destruction. This fits naturally with the broader CI framework, in which the wicked ultimately cease to exist.

I will end here, not because these are the only passages relevant to CI, but because they are among those that most clearly point toward its central claims.

A Theological and Philosophical Defense

There are several theological and philosophical considerations that strengthen the case for Conditional Immortality.

First, if God alone is the sustainer of life, then to definitively reject God would logically result in the loss of life itself. If separation from God is the defining feature of hell, then the final consequence of that separation could reasonably be understood as non-existence rather than perpetual existence in misery.

Second, CI preserves a stronger sense of proportional justice. Finite sins receive a real and serious punishment, yet one that does not require endless conscious suffering. At the same time, human freedom is respected: individuals are genuinely able to reject God and all that comes with him—including the gift of eternal life.

Third, Conditional Immortality presents a more complete vision of God’s ultimate victory over sin and evil. Rather than evil persisting forever in a quarantined corner of creation, sin and the unrepentant alike are finally and fully eradicated. God’s new creation is not merely protected from evil; it is entirely freed from it.

A Critique of Conditional Immortality

While the exegetical and theological case for Conditional Immortality is compelling, there are several critiques that can be raised against it.

First, there is the question of what the New Testament means when it speaks of destruction. Proponents of CI typically take this language in a fairly literal sense, understanding it as the cessation of existence. However, defenders of Eternal Conscious Torment—and even some advocates of Universal Reconciliation—often interpret “destruction” in a more qualitative or relational way. On this reading, destruction refers not to non-existence, but to the soul’s disintegration as it becomes increasingly cut off from the fullness of God’s life and grace.

C.S. Lewis gestures toward this idea in The Great Divorce, where the inhabitants of hell slowly diminish, becoming less human over time as they drift further from God. In this view, destruction names a tragic deformation of the self rather than its annihilation. The ambiguity of the biblical language here makes it difficult to determine with certainty that “destruction” must mean extinction rather than ruin.

Second, as with Eternal Conscious Torment, there are other biblical passages that—at least on the surface—seem to imply a different vision of the final state of the wicked. Texts that speak of unquenchable fire, ongoing judgment, or exclusion can appear to sit uneasily alongside CI’s emphasis on final annihilation. At best, this suggests that CI must work carefully to account for the full range of scriptural imagery. At worst, it raises the possibility that Scripture itself is not univocal regarding what ultimately happens after death.

Third, one could argue that Conditional Immortality struggles to fully account for divine love as it relates to divine judgment. If God is perfectly loving, then God must love all people, and love typically involves valuing the existence of the beloved. It is therefore difficult for some to understand how the complete destruction of a person coheres with God’s enduring love for them. Even if annihilation is seen as merciful when compared to eternal torment, it may still appear inconsistent with a God whose love is said to never fail.

Universal Reconciliation

A Biblical Defense

Universal Reconciliation (UR), known throughout much of church history as the doctrine of apokatastasis, is the view that God will ultimately reconcile the entirety of creation to himself through the saving work of Jesus Christ. This position does not claim that all religious paths lead to salvation, nor does it deny the uniqueness of Christ. Rather, it insists that salvation is accomplished through Christ alone, and that Christ’s atoning work will finally prove effective for all.

In other words, UR is not a denial of the gospel, but a claim about the scope and success of the gospel.

Several biblical passages are commonly cited in support of this view.

Romans 5:18–19

“Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” (NIV)

This may be one of the clearest universalist-sounding texts in the New Testament. The parallelism between Adam and Christ is explicit: the same group affected by Adam’s sin appears to be the group affected by Christ’s obedience. If one affirms that Adam’s sin truly and actually brought condemnation upon all humanity, then, exegetically, it becomes difficult to argue that Christ’s saving act merely makes justification possible rather than effective for that same group.

To read the passage as teaching that sin fully succeeds in condemning all, while grace only potentially succeeds in saving some, risks undermining Paul’s claim that grace abounds all the more (Rom. 5:20). On this reading, grace is not merely equal to sin—it is greater.

Colossians 1:19–22

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (NIV)

Here, the scope of reconciliation is cosmic. Through Christ, God reconciles all things—not only humanity, but the whole created order. The text does not explicitly name any remainder or exception, suggesting that nothing ultimately lies outside the reconciling work accomplished through the cross.

Philippians 2:10–11

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (NIV)

This passage is significant because of the close biblical connection between confessing Jesus as Lord and salvation (cf. Romans 10:9–13). In the ancient world, to confess someone as “Lord” was not merely to state a fact, but to swear allegiance. Universal reconciliation interprets this text as envisioning not coerced submission, but genuine acknowledgment that culminates in God’s glory rather than perpetual rebellion.

John 12:32

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (NIV)

Jesus here claims that his crucifixion and exaltation will result in the drawing of all people to himself. While interpreters debate the nature of this “drawing,” UR proponents see in this text a promise that Christ’s redemptive work is universal in scope and ultimately effective rather than merely invitational.

Once again, this list is not exhaustive. There are plenty more verses that could be given to support UR.

A Theological and Philosophical Defense

Universal Reconciliation arguably offers the most internally consistent account of a God who is perfectly loving. As noted earlier, to love someone is not merely to feel benevolence toward them, but to value their existence, desire their flourishing, and seek restored relationship with them. Universal reconciliation affirms each of these commitments. Unlike Eternal Conscious Torment, it maintains that God ultimately seeks the flourishing of every person. Unlike Conditional Immortality, it affirms that God continues to value the existence of every person. And unlike both, it presents a God who never finally abandons the possibility of relationship with any creature.

Universal Reconciliation also provides a compelling account of divine justice by reframing it in restorative rather than purely retributive terms. On this view, God’s justice is not exhausted by the infliction of deserved punishment, but is ordered toward the healing, correction, and redemption of the offender. This understanding helps make sense of biblical passages that portray divine judgment as purifying or transformative rather than merely punitive (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:14–15; Mark 9:47–49). Judgment, then, becomes a means through which God restores what has been broken rather than an end in itself.

Finally, Universal Reconciliation takes seriously the limitations of human knowledge, culture, and moral formation. If, as Scripture suggests, we now “see through a glass dimly,” then it follows that God’s final judgment would fully account for those limitations. On the UR view, whatever partial or distorted understanding of God a person has in this life is ultimately brought into clarity through Jesus Christ, in whom divine revelation finds its fullness. Redemption, therefore, is not constrained by the epistemic and cultural accidents of one’s earthly life, but is completed through a direct and transformative encounter with Christ.

A Critique of Universal Reconciliation

As with the other views considered, Universal Reconciliation must wrestle honestly with the full range of biblical data. While several passages appear to support a universal scope to Christ’s saving work, there are others that seem—at least on their face—to portray final judgment as decisive and exclusionary. Texts that speak of eternal punishment, outer darkness, or irreversible separation pose real exegetical challenges for UR. These passages cannot simply be explained away without risking an overly selective reading of Scripture.

Beyond the exegetical concerns, the most substantial philosophical challenge to Universal Reconciliation is its apparent tension with human freedom. If all people will ultimately be saved, then it seems that a final and definitive rejection of God is, in the end, impossible. This raises the question of whether a genuine “no” to God can ever endure. If the answer is no, then it becomes unclear whether salvation remains freely embraced or is, at some point, inevitably secured.

This concern leads naturally to the question of coercion. If God ultimately brings every person into reconciliation regardless of their resistance, then critics worry that divine love may begin to resemble compulsion rather than persuasion. Even if coercion is understood in subtle or non-violent terms, the concern remains: does universal reconciliation require God to override human freedom in order to achieve a predetermined outcome?

A related challenge follows from this. If universal reconciliation is the inevitable end of all things, one might reasonably ask why God did not create humanity already in that redeemed state. If the final condition of reconciliation can be achieved for everyone, whether through time, judgment, or post-mortem transformation, then the necessity of history marked by suffering, sin, and alienation becomes difficult to explain. Why permit the long and painful detour if the destination is guaranteed?

Another significant concern often raised against Universal Reconciliation is its potential impact on evangelism and mission. If all people will ultimately be saved, critics worry that the urgency of proclaiming the gospel may be diminished. The New Testament consistently presents evangelism as a matter of real consequence calling people to repentance, faith, and allegiance to Christ in the present. If salvation is ultimately guaranteed for everyone, it becomes less clear why such urgency is necessary, or why the church should endure sacrifice, suffering, and even martyrdom for the sake of mission.

While proponents of Universal Reconciliation frequently respond that evangelism remains vital because it invites people into reconciliation now rather than later, this reply does not fully dissolve the tension. The apostolic witness often frames the gospel not merely as an invitation to present blessing, but as a warning about coming judgment. If that judgment is always temporary and ultimately redemptive for all, critics argue that the motivational force of evangelism may be significantly altered. Universal Reconciliation, therefore, must articulate a robust account of why evangelism matters deeply and urgently if the final outcome of salvation is never truly in question.

Together, these objections suggest that while Universal Reconciliation offers a morally and theologically attractive vision of God’s love, it must still answer serious questions about freedom, judgment, and the purpose of the church’s mission to the world.

Where Do I Stand?

In the end, regardless of which position one adopts, there are theological costs that must be paid. The question is not whether a view has difficulties, but which difficulties one finds most defensible. What follows is not a claim to certainty, but an attempt to be honest about where I currently land. I will begin with what I hold most firmly, and then move to where I find myself leaning.

First, I am increasingly convinced that some form of post-mortem opportunity must exist if God’s love and justice are to be taken seriously. A God who would eternally torment someone or permanently destroy them without exhausting every possible avenue for reconciliation is, in my view, difficult to reconcile with the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ. To suggest that the opportunity for repentance definitively ends at the moment of death appears arbitrary, and given the realities of human life, deeply problematic.

We inhabit a world marked by brokenness, ambiguity, and profound epistemic limitations. Many people sincerely arrive at false conclusions about God, morality, or even Christianity itself—not out of malice, but due to culture, trauma, misinformation, or sheer lack of exposure. Others encounter a distorted or abusive presentation of Jesus that actively repels rather than invites. If God is truly just and loving, these factors must be taken into account. Post-mortem opportunity offers a way of affirming both divine justice and mercy without minimizing human responsibility.

Second, while I hold this conclusion with greater humility, I find myself leaning toward Universal Reconciliation as the most coherent account of final judgment. At present, it appears to me to carry the least theological baggage and to make the best sense of what I understand to be God’s heart and redemptive mission as revealed in Scripture. God consistently expresses a desire that the wicked turn from their ways and live, and I am increasingly persuaded that God’s grace is not only persistent, but ultimately persuasive—that, in the end, every person will freely respond to it.

I remain open to continued dialogue and critique, and I may explore the unresolved objections to Universal Reconciliation in a future article. For now, my hope is that this piece has helped map the theological landscape surrounding Christian views of hell and final judgment in a way that is both honest and charitable. If there are other theological topics you would like to see explored next, feel free to let me know in the comments.

References:

This a section of books you can read to get a better feel for the different views of hell that are out there:

Denny Burk, John G. Stackhouse JR, Robin A. Parry, Jerry L. Walls, Four Views on Hell (Second Edition), ed. Preston Sprinkle (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016).

Chad Bahl, Deconstructing Hell: Open and Relational Responses to the Doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2023).

Ronald J. Allen and Robert D. Cornwall, Second Thoughts About Hell (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2024).

Steve Gregg, All You Want to Know About Hell: Three Christian Views of God’s Final Solution to the Problem of Sin (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2013).

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

This article responds to Moreland’s chapter, “How Theistic Evolution Kicks Christianity Out of the Plausibility Structure and Robs Christians of Confidence that the Bible Is a Source of Knowledge,” from Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. Moreland served as one of the book’s editors, and the volume stands as the most comprehensive Intelligent Design–driven critique of Theistic Evolution to date. Regular readers will know that I disagree with many of the arguments advanced in this book, and I have already published two articles critiquing Wayne Grudem’s contribution.

Moreland’s chapter is less overtly theological and more explicitly philosophical, which presents a different—though no less serious—set of challenges for those who affirm Theistic Evolution or Evolutionary Creation (which I will refer to as TE). While his argument is framed as a defense of Christian confidence and biblical knowledge, I believe it ultimately does the opposite. Moreland is wrong, and the philosophical assumptions driving his critique of TE are not only flawed but damaging. Let’s get into why.

Moreland’s Argument Against TE

In the summary of the article Moreland says:

While important, science is only one of the many ways humans know things. However, given the widespread scientism—the view that the hard sciences are the only or the vastly superior way to know things, especially in comparison to theology and ethics—in our culture, theistic evolutionists reinforce this view by constantly revising biblical teachings and interpretations because science says so. Thus, by adopting this unbiblical epistemological outlook, theistic evolutionists weaken the rational authority of biblical teaching among Christians and non-Christians. As a result, the Bible is no longer regarded by many as a genuine source of knowledge, and fewer and fewer people take the Bible seriously. In this way, perhaps unintentionally, those who adopt theistic evolution marginalize Christian truth claims in the church and the public square.

First, let’s talk about scientism. Scientism, as defined by Moreland, is correct. Scientism is the view that the hard sciences, such as biology, chemistry, astronomy, geology, etc…, provides the most accurate way to understand reality, with some even arguing it is the only way to understand reality. According to philosopher of science Samir Okasha scientism, “is a pejorative term used by some philosophers to describe what they see as science worship, or an over-reverential attitude towards modern science.”1 The question, however, is does TE teach or embrace scientism? Or is this a boogeyman used by creationists like Moreland to scare people into not diving too deeply in the evolution rabbit hole?

First, Moreland makes the argument that culture, due to scientific naturalism and postmodernism, has largely abandoned religion and philosophy as keys to knowledge about objective truth regarding reality. He writes:

The central issue is not whether Christianity is true (one could claim Christianity is true and is based on blind faith and emotion, and would probably be tolerated by European and North American elites); the central issue is whether Christianity can be known to be true. Is or is not Christianity a knowledge tradition, a set of ideas that through history provide us, in its key claims, with truths about reality that can be known to be true?

He goes onto agree with OS Guinness that the church has it’s own gravediggers who ultimately, though unintentionally, will bury Christianity’s authority in culture. He says that, “theistic evolution is the prime culprit. It is one of the church’s leading gravediggers … in the long run, the price to be paid by such an approach is the de-cognitivizing of Christianity—making Christianity a religion that has nothing at all to do with the mind or reason.”

Essentially Moreland’s argument is that by embracing TE, Christianity may not lose members to the scientific naturalism/postmodern framework of culture right away but eventually such an embrace will neuter the intellectual plausibility and authority Christianity has in culture. His big crux is that Christianity should offer us knowledge about reality, but this is constantly being undermined by scientism.

He puts it eloquently enough here:

The deepest issue facing the church today is this: Are its main creeds and central teachings items of knowledge or mere matters of blind faith, privatized personal beliefs, issues of feeling to be accepted or set aside according to the individual or cultural pressures that come and go? Do these teachings have cognitive and behavioral authority that set a worldview framework for approaching science, art, ethics—indeed, all of life? Or are cognitive and behavioral authority set by what scientists, evolutionary biologists, or the members of BioLogos say, or by what Gallup polls tell us is embraced by cultural and intellectual elites? Do we turn to these sources and then set aside or revise two thousand years of Christian thinking and doctrinal/creedal expressions in order to make Christian teaching acceptable to the neuroscience department at UCLA or the paleontologists at Cambridge?

He defines knowledge as representing, “reality in thought or experience the way it really is, on the basis of adequate grounds. Knowledge is true belief based on adequate grounds.” He does clarify that by this definition he is not claiming knowledge is equal to epistemological certainty. Rather that knowledge is confidence that a belief is true and there are no reasons to doubt its truthfulness.

So how does TE undermine Christianity as a source of knowledge? Moreland argues that it undermines it as a plausibility structure. According to Moreland, A plausibility structure is the cumulative background assumptions someone has that sets the tone or framework for how they think about the world. An example would be that a book published by Oxford University Press is going to be perceived as more truthful or intellectually rigorous than a book published by, say, Zondervan. Why? Because we already have a background assumption that Oxford University is a prestigious and academically robust university and, therefore, the content it publishes is going to reflect that while Zondervan has a religious agenda that may influence the truthfulness of the content it publishes.2

TE specifically undermines the plausibility structure of Christianity in 3 ways. First, Moreland points out that TE embraces scientism because it always embraces science when it clashes with the Bible or theology. Second, by revising the Bible to fit science, Moreland argues that Biblical teachings and convictions about a subject become tentative and can only be embraced if it fits the current scientific consensus on a topic. He writes, “According to advocates of scientism—and virtually all theistic evolutionists embrace some form of scientism—biblical/theological ideas, ethical positions, and other claims that fail to have the backing of science are simply personal feelings and blind-faith commitments.” Finally, he says that TE undermines believability of God in the process of creation given that evolution is a naturalistic process with no obvious involvement from an intelligent designer.

Where I agree with Moreland

I want to start off the response section of this article with where I agree with Moreland. First and foremost, I agree with Moreland that scientism is philosophically a dead end. Science is a method that helps us understand reality, but it isn’t the only method for understanding reality and I would argue it isn’t the “best” or “superior” method for understanding reality. I don’t even think we should use categories like “best” or “superior” when referring to methods for discerning reality because reality, itself, is complex and requires multiple methods of inquiry to discern it. For example, scientism, itself, is self-refuting since it can’t be verified scientifically. The question of whether science is the only way or “best” way to know reality is a philosophical/epistemological question, not a science one. Different methods of inquiry is needed for different subject matters.

I also agree with Moreland that Christianity makes truth claims about metaphysics, ethics, and history and should not be merely relegated to privatized beliefs. The very central claim of Christianity is that there is a loving God who created our world and then became one of the creatures in order to save creation from itself. These claims have implications for how we see the world around us and how we see each other.

Moreland is Inconsistent

The biggest place I disagree with Moreland would be on his view that TE embraces scientism. Moreland is an advocate of both Biblical inerrancy and concordism, which argues that the Bible, when properly understood, should concord with the reality of the subject it speaks of. For example, if Genesis 2 says that Adam and Eve were special creations by God and were the parents of all humanity then this must concord with the world’s natural history. If science says otherwise then that either means the science is wrong or it means that the interpretation of Scripture is wrong. Therefore, Moreland argues that the science regarding evolution must be wrong given that he believes the Bible is inerrant and that Genesis is a historical record that contradicts evolution.

Because of Moreland’s hermeneutical assumptions, he believes TE embraces scientism and believes the Bible is a less reliable source of knowledge. I think Moreland is wrong on this point, and also that he is inconsistent. For starters, Moreland is an old-earth creationist who rejects young-earth creationism. In the 3 views on creation and evolution book edited by Moreland he gives advice to those who embrace young-earth creationism:

Suppose we are interpreting some biblical text and we have hermeneutical option A and option B. Suppose further, that on exegetical grounds alone, we compare the text with other portions of Scripture and find that (1) A and B are both plausible, that is, within the bounds of reason exegetically speaking; and (2) A is superior to B. Now suppose further that B harmonizes Scripture with what we have pretty good reason to believe is true outside the Bible, but A flies in the face of these extrabiblical factors. In short, B solves external conceptual problems. Then, in my view, it is hermeneutically permissible to adopt B as the correct interpretation of a text.

So here Moreland is adamant that it is permissible to adopt interpretations of Scripture that are equally plausible to other faithful understandings of the text especially when they correlate to what we know of through science. Yet, I am sure that a young-earth creationist would accuse Moreland of embracing scientism given that they would say his interpretation isn’t equally plausible as theirs exegetically and that the only reason he would embrace such an interpretation is because of scientific pressure to do so. Moreland needs to explain why his view isn’t scientism.

TE Doesn’t Embrace Scientism

TE does not embrace scientism. Rather, it argues that science is the best method we have for discerning the natural world and it’s inner workings. This doesn’t mean that science is the only method worthy of consideration for understanding reality, but it does mean that science is the most reliable when it comes to it’s domain of knowledge. Generally, TE also embraces the idea that the Bible is a source for knowledge on metaphysics, ontology, morality, history, and theology. They acknowledge that the Bible is not a science book and it never was meant to be.

This is where I think Moreland’s argument falls apart. It assumes that the Bible is inerrant and that concordism is correct. But there are real exegetical reasons to reject concordism. Even if one continues believing in inerrancy, there are real issues with seeing the early chapters of Genesis as a purely historical record of events. I have detailed those issues in several other articles that I have already written.3 For now, I will simply say that many Old Testament scholars note that the opening chapters of Genesis contain parallels to other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation myths including allusions to ancient cosmology.4 Note this doesn’t mean that Genesis should outright be labelled a myth just because there are parallels, rather it means that there are hermeneutical reasons, not related to evolution, to reject the concordist view of Genesis. This isn’t to say the early chapters of Genesis aren’t trustworthy, but we need to acknowledge what these texts are inspired to do, which is to ground the theological nature of reality as ordered by God as sacred space where God relates with his creation and calls humanity to participate in the work of ordering the cosmos.

Does TE Compromise Theology for Science?

I also think it is unfair of Moreland to say that TE always revises the Bible or theology because of science. As said earlier, there are exegetical/hermeneutical reasons to disagree with the concordist view of the Bible. Second, the church has a long history of readjusting it’s reading of Scripture due to scientific discoveries. For example, Galileo’s discovery forced the church to reevaluate the longstanding view that the Bible promoted geocentrism. Was the church embracing scientism when they renegotiated the text or was it correcting a faulty interpretation? Likewise, TE is constructively trying to integrate what science says about evolution with Christian theology. It is also important to note that most of church history did not have the hindsight of Darwin’s discovery in order to navigate how both the Biblical text and Christian theology might interact with discoveries in evolutionary biology and paleontology.

Many proponents of TE are not throwing away theology or the Bible because they believe science pushes those things to the side. Rather, they are embracing a longstanding tradition of dialogical integration that tries to see God’s two books of revelation (The Bible and Nature) harmonizing with each other. Will this potentially raise challenges to how traditional doctrines have been understood like original sin or the Fall? Yes, but it doesn’t mean those doctrines suddenly become unimportant or discarded, but they should be re-imagined given new knowledge.

Now, this brings us to Moreland’s big critique that TE never argues that the science is what could be wrong rather than traditional doctrines of the church. I can understand why he would say this and am sympathetic to his concerns. However, as noted already, there are exegetical/hermeneutical reasons, independent of evolution, to question the traditional/fundamentalist understanding of those doctrines. Likewise, Moreland would need to show when a scientific discovery becomes so undeniable that it warrants revision of theology rather than merely assuming theology must outweigh scientific discovery. The sword cuts both ways. Most proponents of TE, like myself, tend to re-evaluate doctrines when we feel that other sources of knowledge show that the doctrine, as traditionally understood, is no longer tenable. I believe we have already crossed that threshold when it comes to evolution.

Does TE Weaken Christianity’s Plausibility Structure?

Finally, let’s talk about plausibility structures. Moreland thinks TE undermines Christianity’s plausibility structure. I highly disagree. Instead, I believe TE preserves it. If skeptics see that evolution is not undermined by Christianity, but instead is helped by it due to Christianity giving evolution a metaphysical/metanarrative grounding filled with purpose and intention then it may help sweep away objections to the faith. By contrast, approaches that frame theology as a fragile system threatened by scientific discovery risk weakening Christianity’s plausibility by teaching believers to value inherited interpretations of their faith over the pursuit of truth. I have seen many people struggle with science and faith, and it is one of the top reasons many are leaving the church.5

Conclusion

While I respect J. P. Moreland as a Christian philosopher, I believe his critique of Theistic Evolution ultimately misses its mark. TE is not a gravedigger of Christianity’s intellectual credibility; if anything, it functions as a balm for the church’s wounded confidence in engaging the modern world. Far from marginalizing Christian truth claims, TE seeks to preserve their plausibility by refusing the false choice between faithful theology and responsible science.

The deeper issue is not whether Christianity should make truth claims about reality—it must—but how those claims are articulated in light of all the knowledge available to us. The history of the church shows that theological reflection has always involved discernment, development, and integration. Evolution presents another moment in that long tradition, not a betrayal of it.

If the church is to bear credible witness in a scientifically literate culture, it must resist the temptation to frame science as an enemy and theology as fragile. Instead, Christians should lead in thoughtful, rigorous integration across disciplines—science, theology, philosophy, and biblical studies—confident that truth, wherever it is found, ultimately belongs to God. That posture does not weaken Christianity’s plausibility structure; it strengthens it.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence

For those unfamiliar, Eternal Conscious Torment (hereafter ETC) is the view that hell is a place of never-ending punishment for sin. It is the traditional position held by most Evangelical Christians. What makes this moment so striking, however, is not simply what Cameron said, but who said it.

Kirk Cameron is himself a conservative Evangelical Christian. He is a committed young-earth creationist. He is devoted to biblicism and biblical inerrancy. He is also a vocal Trump supporter. By nearly every metric, Cameron fits the classic stereotype of American conservative Evangelicalism.

And yet, on a recent episode of his podcast, Cameron stated that he has changed his mind on the ETC view of hell and now identifies as an annihilationist—someone who believes in conditional immortality. I’ll explain what that means in a moment.

Before doing so, though, I want to be clear about why I’m writing this article.

It is not because I agree with Kirk Cameron. I am not an annihilationist, even though I do find the position more credible than ETC. Rather, I want to explore a deeper problem within Evangelical theology: the kind of dogmatism that treats disagreement as heresy.

The H word gets dropped a lot in Evangelical spaces. “Heretic” often functions less as a careful theological judgment and more as a conversation-ending accusation. I want to reflect on why that is, what it reveals about Evangelical culture, and whether this instinct actually helps the church think—and witness—faithfully.

But first, we need to explain what annihilationism actually is.

What Is Annihilationism?

Annihilationism is the view that God created human beings as mortal and that immortality is a gift given only through participation in the new creation in Christ. According to this view, hell is a real but temporary punishment, followed by the complete destruction of the wicked rather than their eternal conscious torment.

This stands in contrast to ETC, which holds that the wicked remain conscious forever in a state of punishment.

The biblical texts commonly cited by annihilationists emphasize death and destruction rather than endless torment. A few representative examples include:

John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Matthew 7:13 – “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction…”

Romans 9:22 – “…the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction.”

Philippians 3:19 – “Their destiny is destruction…”

Romans 6:21–23 – “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life…”

This is not an exhaustive list, but the pattern is hard to ignore. These passages consistently describe the final consequence of sin as death and destruction, not eternal conscious suffering.

Importantly, annihilationism is not a modern innovation. Variations of the view can be found throughout church history and were held by figures such as Justin Martyr and Ignatius of Antioch.

So the question becomes unavoidable: is annihilationism heresy?

What Is Heresy?

“Heresy” is a tricky word—mostly because it is used far more casually than it should be. In many Evangelical spaces, heresy has come to mean “any theological position I strongly disagree with.”

I have seen Christians labeled heretics for believing God created through evolution, rejecting divine determinism, affirming women in pastoral ministry, denying biblical inerrancy (while still affirming inspiration), and the list goes on.

Kirk Cameron has now been called a heretic for his views on annihilationism. But is he?

Here’s the problem: if heresy simply means disagreement, then the term is functionally meaningless. Historically, heresy was reserved for beliefs that placed someone outside the Christian faith—beliefs that, if true, would undermine the gospel itself.1

Classical heresies include denying the full divinity or humanity of Christ, or rejecting salvation by grace through faith. These are not merely theological errors; they are errors so severe that they compromise the heart of Christianity.

By that standard, annihilationism does not qualify. It does not deny Christ, salvation, grace, or resurrection. It offers an alternative account of divine judgment—not a different gospel.

Given this, it is difficult to argue that Kirk Cameron is, in any meaningful historical or theological sense, a heretic. If you believe he is a heretic, then the burden is on you to show how annihilationism actually undermines salvation.

Is Heresy Useful?

I do not think Kirk Cameron is a heretic. What interests me more is how quickly the charge was made and how easily it ended the conversation.

I want to suggest that “heresy” has become one of the least useful words in modern Christian theology. Rather than clarifying truth, it often functions as a warning label: do not engage, do not question, do not think too closely.

Here’s why:

Read more

And it isn’t just humanity that suffers. For millions of years, creaturely existence has been marked by death and struggle. Even the process that brought about life’s complexity—evolution—is a natural arms race. Species adapt to survive, and that survival often comes at the cost of others. It’s easy, then, to sympathize with Dawkins: the universe can look like it has no purpose at all, only cold indifference toward the creatures who briefly emerge within it.

Yet this is also the time of year when Christians enter Advent—a season proclaiming that the Creator of the universe has stepped into His creation. The contrast is jarring. On one hand, creation groans under the weight of its suffering. On the other, Advent declares not only that a loving Creator stands behind all things, but that this Creator loves the world so deeply He takes on creaturely existence and all its brokenness. How do we hold these realities together? Could our intuition that suffering signals indifference be mistaken? What if the world’s brokenness is not proof of God’s absence but a signpost of love?

Christology and Creation

John 1:1–5 opens with a bold claim:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made…The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John insists that the Cosmic Christ—the pre-incarnate Christ—is both God and the source of all creaturely existence. Genesis 1 paints a similar picture: the Spirit of God hovers over darkness and draws creation out of chaos. In Christ “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Scripture is clear: creaturely existence is animated and sustained by the life of Christ.

But how do we make sense of this in light of what we know from the evolutionary history of the world?

Many Christians stumble over evolution because they assume a loving, omnipotent God would create a perfect world—one where creatures are made fully formed, harmonious, mature, and ready for a peaceful life with one another and with their Creator. But what if that kind of world isn’t just unlikely, but incapable of producing the things God desires most for His creatures?

Creation Out of Love

If God is perfectly loving, then God desires a world where His creatures can discover their potential and experience the fullest flourishing possible. God also desires the deepest relationship possible with those creatures. And for those two things to be true, a pre-fabricated, perfectly harmonious world simply won’t do.

Why? Because creatures who get to participate in their own development, in shaping their environment, and in the unfolding of their flourishing are going to flourish more deeply than creatures who have a “flourishing life” handed to them fully formed. Growth, freedom, exploration, risk, vulnerability, adaptation—these are the conditions that allow creatures to become more than they were, not just remain what they were made as.

If flourishing is also connected to a relationship with God, then deep relationships require something else as well: a world with a degree of religious ambiguity. Imagine, for a moment, that God were readily visible to all—that His existence were as obvious and undeniable as gravity. In that kind of world, it would be nearly impossible to reject God’s existence, maybe even impossible to resist His will. But a relationship that cannot be rejected is not a relationship grounded in love; it is compulsion. Genuine love requires freedom, and freedom requires a world where God’s presence is real but not overpowering, inviting but not coercive.

A world of dynamic process, partial hiddenness, and genuine openness is the kind of world where deep relationships become possible—where love can be freely received and freely returned. And it’s the kind of world where creatures can truly grow into the fullness of life God desires for them.

But a world like this is risky. It carries the possibility that creatures may resist the Spirit’s invitation toward love, choosing instead to harm themselves and each other. And after millions of years of resisting that call, the world may end up looking less like a vision of God’s love perfectly manifested and more like a war zone scarred by violence, fear, and refusal.

Of course, not every creature “chooses” harm in any conscious sense. Much of what happens in the natural world is instinct, not intention. But for this reflection, I’m thinking about the cumulative effects of a creation that has not yet grown into the fullness of God’s love—through conscious rejection where it exists, through creaturely immaturity where it doesn’t, or most likely through a mixture of both. Regardless, such a world is still created out of love, and that love sustains and empowers the evolution of creation.

Creation Revealed in Christ

If the story of creation is beautiful yet wounded, then the incarnation becomes God’s way of healing that story from within. Christ’s Spirit animates all creatures toward life, and that same Spirit has always been present at every stage of existence. What we see in the incarnation, then, is the embodiment of the intimacy the universal Christ already shares with creation. Through taking on flesh, Christ enters the very processes that shape life, bearing its wounds in order to redeem them.

C.S. Lewis said it best:

He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He had created.1

By sharing in creaturely existence, the incarnate Christ enters the evolutionary story—experiencing its rhythms, its vulnerabilities, its suffering, and ultimately its death. This must take place if creation is to be healed.

Christopher Southgate puts it like this:

“God lets the world happen to God and in the process both transforms the world, and also experiences new levels of empathy with creatures.”2

Even creation itself points toward this hope. New life so often emerges through death. Entire extinction events paved the way for new forms of life to flourish. Nature seems locked into this cycle of life coming through death, and this cycle mirrors the groaning creation now experiences as it awaits the finality of God’s kingdom, where the lion will lie down with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6).

Creation Through the Lens of Advent

As mentioned earlier, the incarnation signifies that God has come to dwell within His creation. A God who creates out of love can only achieve the deepest relationship possible with His creatures by taking on creaturely flesh and sharing in their evolutionary history.

Rather than being a stumbling block to faith, evolution gives new layers of meaning to the Advent season. As Elizabeth Johnson puts it:

“The divine reach through human flesh all the way down into the very tissue of biological existence with its growth and decay, joined with the wider process of evolving nature that beget and sustains life.”3

In other words, Advent isn’t just hope for humanity but hope for every living creature that has ever existed or will ever exist. And if God’s love extends to our animal brethren, then so should ours as we continue in this season of sharing Christ’s love and hope with the wider world.

And in a world that often looks indifferent, Advent insists that love—not indifference—is at the root of everything. It is this love that entered creation, bears its wounds, and is even now drawing all things toward their fulfillment.

About the Author

I’m a writer and theologian passionate about the intersection of science and faith, open and relational theology, and spiritual reconstruction. You can subscribe for future essays as I write about my own musings over the deep questions surrounding God, Faith, and Human Existence