Dr. John Sanford, Another Atheist-Turned-Christian
Once he realized that the Primary Axiom is indefensible, he had to reevaluate his entire worldview. He started off coming to the conclusion that there must be a Creator, and then he began submitting to Jesus. He left Cornell University specifically because the academic environment was hostile to Christian values, but he has not stopped using his scientific talents. He continues to publish in the peer-reviewed literature, doing original research that demonstrates how indefensible the Primary Axiom is (see here, here, and here, for example). He is also president of Logos Research Associates, which is focused on original scientific research related to the field of origins.
Dr. John Sanford is a brilliant geneticist. He has published more than 100 papers in the peer-reviewed literature and holds several dozen patents in genetics. Most notably, he was the primary inventor of the gene gun, which allows scientists to take genes from one species and insert them into another species so that they work. For 18 years, he was a professor of plant genetics at Cornell University.
When it comes to his worldview early in his career, he puts it rather clearly:
I was totally sold on evolution. It was my religion; it defined how I saw everything, it was my value system and my reason for being.
In his incredible book, Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Human Genome, he tells the reader some of what led him to change his mind. He defines the “Primary Axiom” as the belief that man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection. He then writes:
Late in my career, I did something which for a Cornell Professor would seem unthinkable. I began to question the Primary Axiom. I did this with great fear and trepidation. By doing this, I knew I would be at odds with the most “sacred cow” within modern academia…To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly “great and unassailable fortress” which has been built up around the Primary Axiom is really a house of cards. The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory – in fact, it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives largely from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. (2nd edition, p. vi)
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On Properly Distinguishing Law and Gospel
Law and gospel go together in Paul’s thought, and having been shown the truth of the gospel and having trusted God in light of it, we are then to show the sincerity of our faith and to realize the law’s temporal purpose and the rest of God’s predestined will for us (Eph. 2:10) by obeying the law as a way of love for redeemed persons (Rom. 13:8-10; Col. 3:1-14; 1 Jn. 2:3-5). Law convicts, gospel reconciles, and law informs and sanctifies the redeemed life.
In a recent article I criticized an anonymous group of Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) agency heads for using the phrase “gospel imperative that ‘love does no wrong to a neighbor (Romans 13:10)’” that had also appeared in a 2016 denominational resolution. Central to my objection was that the phrase spoke of the gospel while quoting a section of Romans that deals with the law – the rest of v. 10 states “therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (emphasis mine) – and thus conflated what ought to have been distinguished. In a subsequent response a professor and PCA member, Chris Bryans, expressed uncertainty as to my meaning, saying:
I am not sure where Mr. Hervey is going in his brief comment about Romans 13:10. In attempting to separate law and gospel he believes that Paul is not discussing the gospel but the Law. The author is correct but only in a limited sense. And, as I am sure Mr. Hervey will recognize, although Paul lays out the gospel in Romans chapters 1-11, the applications of the gospel present themselves in the beginning of chapter 12 and continue to the end of the book.
And elsewhere:
What Mr. Hervey also means by the “separation of law and gospel” is as unclear to me as some of the issues of the Statement seem to be to him. How the separation of law and gospel relates to the issue at hand is also a puzzle to me. The same statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is part of law AND gospel. This needs further elaboration and I look forward to it.
In answer to the professor’s objections, and also because of correspondence which informs me that ministers doing important denominational work regard the law/gospel distinction as peculiarly Lutheran, I offer this response.
In the first case, I did perhaps speak poorly in saying that a “separation” should be maintained between law and gospel, which might suggest they are utterly antithetical. It is noteworthy, however, that I had earlier said (in my “brief comment about Romans 13:10”) that “as a rule the law and the gospel should be carefully distinguished, and each appealed to in its proper place”; i.e., the separation in view is really a clear distinction that puts each in its proper sphere and in the right relation to the other. I will concede that I could have been clearer, but I do not wish for Professor Bryans or anyone else to believe that a believer can so fully separate law and gospel that he can deal with only one rather than both, or that they ought to be regarded as exclusive of each other.
What is the law? In its widest sense it means God’s revealed will for human behavior. In this sense it includes the moral law which is impressed upon human conscience through God’s common grace operating in society (Rom. 2:14-15).[1] In a narrower sense it refers to the special revelation of this will in the Old and New Testaments, hence it sometimes refers to the whole Old Testament (Jn. 10:34), while in other cases it refers specifically to the Mosaic Law (Matt. 7:12), and in yet others it refers to the way of love as taught and exemplified by Christ and his apostles (Jn. 15:9-17; Rom. 13:8-10; Gal. 6:2; 1 Jn. 4:21-5:3).[2]
What is the gospel? It is the good news of the kingdom of God which has appeared with the incarnation of Christ (Matt. 4:23; 9:35), and which has been raised against the oppressive kingdom of sin, death, and devil that afflicts people with misery and separates them from God (Lk. 11:14-22; Jn. 12:31). God’s kingdom is built upon the redeeming work of its king, who has atoned for the sins of his people and broken the power of death and the devil by dying in their place and rising from the dead (Rom. 4:25; 1 Cor. 15:20-22; Heb. 2:14-16). This redemption is received by faith (Mk. 1:15; Rom. 1:16-17; 3:21-26), and so the gospel is then the message of God’s kingdom and of how to enter it by a faith that receives and rests on the king who has accomplished redemption by his work.
The distinction between law and gospel is not per se a distinction between the Old and New Testaments, between grace and judgment, or between commands and promises. Both law (Matt. 5:17-19) and gospel (Gen. 3:15; 15:6; Ps. 32:1-2; comp. Rom. 4:3, 6-8) are present in both testaments, albeit with different degrees of clarity.[3] Both are of grace, as God could have left us to wallow in the darkness of our own sin. Both have to do with judgment (Rom. 2:12, 16). Both relate to sin and have a part in the lives of both believers and unbelievers, being to the former a blessing and to the latter a source of condemnation (2 Cor. 2:15-17). Both contain commands – “do” and “do not” in the case of the law and “repent and believe” in the case of the gospel (Mk. 1:15; 6:12; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; Rom. 16:25) – as well as promised rewards for obedience (Deut. 28:1-15; Acts 16:31; Rom. 10:9-13) and warnings and punishments for disobedience (Deut. 28:15-68; Heb. 6:4-6; 2 Pet. 2:20-22).
Law and gospel are antithetical only on one point, and even there only insofar as there is human misunderstanding about the matter. It just so happens that this is the most important matter in any person’s life. In the question of salvation the law and gospel are opposed if a person believes that salvation comes from obeying the law, the misunderstanding of Judaism and of various groups throughout church history. If one is inclined to think along such lines, the answer is that the law is a failed, impossible way of gaining eternal life and serves only to condemn, whereas the gospel of God’s free grace in the person and work of Christ, received by faith, is the only means of obtaining the desired salvation. As regards salvation the law is death (Rom. 7:5, 10) and the gospel is life (5:10-21); the law increases sin (5:20) and the gospel compels to righteousness (5:21-6:14); the law is of works (Gal. 3:10-12) and the gospel of faith (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16; 3:13-14); the law is condemnation (Rom. 3:19-20) and the gospel is grace and justification (3:21-26); the law is selfish (Gal. 5:2-4) and the gospel is Christ-centered (2:20-21).
Properly understood, law and gospel are distinct but complementary. The law convicts of sin and shows the insufficiency of all human efforts to earn eternal life, whereas the gospel shows God’s remedy for human depravity and guilt. For the redeemed the law shows the need for the gospel (Rom. 3:19-20), while the gospel provides the material knowledge which faith believes and which moves one to trust God for salvation (3:21-30). The gospel then sets one in the right relation to the law by making it a joyful guide for how to love God and Man (13:8-10), not a hopeless way to try to earn salvation (3:20), nor a condemning testimony to one’s own conscience (2:15) and at the Day of Judgment (2:16). For the reprobate both law and gospel serve to increase the guilt of those who have encountered and rejected them, while those that have not known them will be judged apart from them (Lk. 10:13-16; 12:47-48; Rom. 2:12; 2 Pet. 2:21.)
What makes all of this liable to confusion is that Paul uses the phrase “the law” in different ways, using it to refer especially to the Mosaic Law in the earlier chapters of Romans, and then in the later chapters meaning by it what he elsewhere calls “the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), i.e. a way of living characterized by love for neighbor. Nonetheless, in its varied forms the law is one thing, the gospel another. Both go together to provide an accurate knowledge of Man’s sin, of his need for forgiveness, of how to obtain eternal life, and of how to live a life pleasing to God. But they are distinct and must be carefully recognized as such. To attempt to have law without gospel is to attempt to earn salvation – and to fail miserably. To attempt to have gospel without law is to become an antinomian and to open the door to hypocritically pleading Christ while living wickedly. To conflate the two is to convert the gospel into a new law, the error sometimes known as neonomianism, which changes the gospel from being about what God has done in Christ, the reconciliation which is received by faith, and makes it instead into a different set of directions for what men must do to please God.
Those that speak of a ‘“gospel imperative that ‘love does no wrong to a neighbor’” while appealing to Romans 13 make the error of mistaking gospel for law. Romans 13 is about law, not gospel: loving neighbor is therefore a legal imperative, not a gospel one. But Romans 13 is about law as a guide for proper conduct because Romans 1 through 11 are about gospel and about the law as a testimony to our own sin, our inability to save ourselves, and our need for God to redeem us.[4]
Law and gospel go together in Paul’s thought, and having been shown the truth of the gospel and having trusted God in light of it, we are then to show the sincerity of our faith and to realize the law’s temporal purpose and the rest of God’s predestined will for us (Eph. 2:10) by obeying the law as a way of love for redeemed persons (Rom. 13:8-10; Col. 3:1-14; 1 Jn. 2:3-5). Law convicts, gospel reconciles, and law informs and sanctifies the redeemed life.[5] That is the proper relation and order of law and gospel as revealed in Paul’s writings.
Those that fail to distinguish the two and regard as gospel what is really law open the door to further error, not least the errors of the so-called social gospel, which turns the Church’s message from the gospel of reconciliation to God by faith into an appeal for merely temporal philanthropy. That the phrase to which I objected occurred originally and subsequently in statements about social affairs should therefore move you to concern, dear reader. And while I do not think this indicates that the mistaken authors in view are heretics, nonetheless it betrays a sloppiness in scriptural exegesis and ethical and theological thought that ill becomes our denomination and its foremost men, a sloppiness that merits criticism (and amendment) lest it inspire further failures to rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15) that will lead us father away from the Church’s proper mission of making disciples by the means of grace and on into the abyss of socio-political activism in which so many other Presbyterians have foundered and died by abandoning the Great Commission for things that are more properly the province of other institutions.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.[1] H. Bavinck, Reformed Ethics Vol. I, 218-226
[2] Of course what is recorded in the New Testament was, previous to its authorship, transmitted via other means (2 Thess. 2:15).
[3] This lack of clarity is especially as regards the gospel in the Old Testament. One of the purposes of the law was to show the depravity of sin and with it the need for a gracious redeemer to save man from sin’s dominion: thus the law was added to help clarify the gospel (Rom. 7:7-13; Gal. 3:21-26).
[4] On this point Professor Bryans and I agree, though implications is arguably a preferable term to his own “applications,” as it better communicates the fact that being in the right relation to the law is a consequence of embracing the gospel of salvation by faith in Christ.
[5] Hence we have historically distinguished between the three uses of the law, two of which are in view here. Its use in conviction is regarded as the second use of the law; its use in teaching love is its third use.
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Hope for a World In Ruins
When the light of Scripture searches our hearts, we’re exposed as guilty. We’ve fallen short of the glory of God. We sin because we are sinners, and we deserve to reap the judgment in the darkness we love. But, grace upon grace, light shines into the world. There is hope in the ruins because Christ has entered the ruins. And where Christ is, there is light.
I don’t presume to know what your year has been like. But this I know: life is not easy. Every year has its hardships, its losses, its unmet expectations. In a fallen world filled with sinners, some manner of difficulty is not only reasonable, it is part of our day-to-day existence.
Don’t you see how every part of our world is in need of rescue? There’s nothing the curse of sin hasn’t touched. There’s no one unaffected by it. Broken families are everywhere. Loneliness abounds. Medical maladies seem overwhelming, and ultimately there is no medicine to stop death. Political and social tensions run hot and, especially in the United States, there’s pent-up anger that seeks outlets of every sort.
The only hope for a world in ruins is the redeemer of sinners. John tells us in the Fourth Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). That’s what we need—light that the darkness can’t overcome. This light is Jesus. He is the “true light, which gives light to everyone” (1:9).
What John has in mind is the incarnation of the Son of God. Jesus is the light, and the incarnation is how he came into the world.
Jesus shines in the world which was made through him (John 1:10). He was before all things, and he entered the world to redeem all things. What we need for the darkness is redeeming light, yet no one deserves this light.
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Talitha Cumi
There will come a time when the graves will opened. And all of you ladies who are in Christ will hear: “Talitha cumi.” “Little girl, get up.” And all of you men who are resting in Jesus for the forgiveness of sin—you will hear: “Talay Cumi.” “Little boy, get up.” And you will be ushered into eternity—body and soul—by the one who conquered death.
Most of the Gospel of Mark is written in Greek, and when the reader is confronted with Jesus speaking Aramaic, it ought to give pause. Jairus’s twelve year-old daughter–an only child–lay dead and the Lord Jesus had been called to her bedside to heal her. The Gospel records:
Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. Mark 5:41-42
With the quiet of the room and the mourning of the parents…
With Peter and James and John looking on…
With a twelve year old girl lying dead in her bed…
With all the wailing outside and the mockery of Jesus….
With the words of her death spreading around the small town….
Jesus, the precious savior, takes this little girl by the hand and whispers in Aramaic:
Talitha cumi.
These are two of the most precious words in all of the Word of God:
“Little girl, get up.”“Honey, it’s okay—rise up.”“Rise up, little girl.”
And she did.
She rose from the dead as Jesus brought her back to life through whispering two of the most precious words that have ever crossed the lips of humanity.
Talitha cumi.
Now go–if you will–with me into the next years and decades of life, along with this twelve-year old girl. Use your sanctified imagination.
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