Wrong on Two Counts

Matt. 22:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

When the Sadducees, who were the theological (religious scholars), philosophical, and scientific elite of the day, came to Jesus with a trick question in an attempt to discredit Him, He responded with the stinging rebuke found in the verse above. While His response dealt specifically with the fact of resurrection and the nature of the after-life, His two-fold evaluation of self-reliant scholars still fits today, particularly in regard to evolutionary speculations. Darwin attributed to nature, concluding evolutionary progression based on natural selection, abilities which clearly belong to God alone. He knew something of the Scriptures, but his memoirs show that he had little understanding of basic Biblical teaching. He felt that if there was a God, He had little power or had not been involved in the affairs of this earth. Most atheistic evolutionists today follow Darwin's intellectual footsteps.

But what of Christian intellectuals, theistic evolutionists, progressive creationists, or advocates of the framework hypothesis, who claim to know God but yet deny His awesome power in creation? They too reject the clear teaching of Scripture regarding creation, relegating God to the mundane task of overseeing potentially accomplishable by man. Peter aptly describes this attitude when he calls it willful ignorance; 2 Peter 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water.

It has been sugggested by some that all human error can be traced to one or both of these categories: 1) not knowing and/or believing the Scriptures and 2) underestimating the power of God.