Dr. Walton introduces a false tension between history and theology in order to disconnect real events from their historical-theological implications. This separation between history and theology enables him to replace the Biblical history of the world with a materialist evolutionary history. In redefining man’s history, however, he must inevitably redefine the theology connected to it.

This post is a sequel to How Did Theistic Evolution Bring 3 Wheaton Students to the Ark?

The history of the church includes well-meaning scholars who introduce ideas that undermine Biblical authority. This is the case with the gifted Old Testament professor Dr. John Walton.

Dr. Walton teaches at Wheaton College. Last November, in preparation for a campus showing of our film Is Genesis History?, he provided a paper for professors to pass out to students. Entitled “Is Genesis Real History?,” it outlined his unique perspective on how to interpret the book of Genesis. (You can read it here.)

A number of students were troubled by what they read. Dr. Walton seemed to be questioning whether the Bible could be used to know what actually happened in the past. His ideas were complex, however, and some students were not sure what to make of them.

One student asked if I would respond. Although there are a number of observations I can make, his paper should first be placed in context of his prior work and affiliations.

Finding a Lost World

In 2009, Dr. Walton published a slim volume entitled The Lost World of Genesis One. In it he argued that to understand the Bible, one needed to understand the ancient cultural environment in which it was written. One must therefore immerse oneself in the non-Israelite literature written during that period. Using this new knowledge, one could recover the “lost world” of the ancients and properly interpret the Bible.

Although conservative scholars agreed that understanding ancient culture is important, there was strong disagreement with his analysis and conclusions.^[1]

For example, Dr. Walton asserted that ancient Near Eastern people focused more on how things functioned than their material nature. This meant that when Genesis 1 describes God forming land, sea, and animals over a series of days, it is not referring to material substances like dirt, water, and flesh appearing at specific times and places. Rather, it reveals the function of these things within the ‘cosmic temple’ of the world.

This unusual construction enabled Dr. Walton to conclude that Genesis 1 “was never intended to be an account of material origins. Rather it was intended as an account of functional origins…. If the Bible does not offer an account of material origins, we are free to consider contemporary origins on their own merits, as long as God is seen as ultimately responsible.”^[2]

The Usefulness of a Lost World

Theistic evolutionists quickly recognized the usefulness of this new interpretation. They desired to merge evolutionary history with the Bible, but had always struggled with the traditional interpretation of Genesis: immediate creation in six normal days is the opposite of progressive development over billions of years.

Dr. Walton’s interpretation was the perfect solution. It acted like a hermenuetical blade separating the events of Genesis 1 from actual time, thereby enabling evolutionary events to take their place.

This is why Francis Collins, founder of theistic evolution advocacy group Biologos, is quoted on the book’s front cover saying it is “a profoundly important new analysis of the meaning of Genesis.” Not surprisingly, Dr. Walton is a member of the Biologos Advisory Council.

The mission of Biologos is to convince the global evangelical church to adopt theistic evolution. As they say on their website: “BioLogos invites the church and the world to see the harmony between science and biblical faith as we present an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation.”

Dr. Walton’s work therefore plays a key part in their strategy. They understand that to change the church, they must first change its understanding of Genesis. In 2013, Biologos funded a seven month world tour for Dr. Walton to speak in dozens of seminaries and universities in the United States and 15 other countries.

Since then, Dr. Walton has continued to apply his ‘lost world’ methodology to other parts of the Bible. In additional books, he redefines the nature of Biblical revelation, that Adam and Eve were ‘archetypes’ instead of the first biological humans, and that the Genesis flood was an unidentifiable local event hyperbolically described as a global catastrophe.^[3]

How does an evangelical Bible scholar end up advancing such heterodox ideas?

It is here that Dr. Walton’s Wheaton paper provides unique insight into his thinking. What it reveals is that he has adopted a gnostic view of the ancient world that enables him to reinterpret key sections of Scripture.

Entering a Gnostic World

Dr. Walton reminds me of the third-century theologian Origen to whom he sometimes refers. Origen had one of the most creative theological minds in the early church. Nevertheless, his creativity led him to advocate views that were rejected as dangerous to Christian theology.

That is what students sensed when they read Dr. Walton’s paper. There is a dangerous feel to statements such as:

• “No such thing as a historian existed in the ancient world.”
• “Genesis is better understood as narrative rather than as a record of historical events.”
• “When we accept the truth of such narratives we are accepting the metaphysical affirmations, which transcend the empirical.”
• “It is impossible to forensically reconstruct events using the information that the Bible provides.”
• “When we attempt to frame narratives in historical terms we potentially diminish their truth and limit the nature of their reality.”
• “Genesis narratives are interested in a deep reality that transcends events and history. Their significance is found not in their historicity but in their theology; not in what happened, or even in asserting that something did happen, but in why it happened.”

These statements reveal a modern form of gnosticism.

By ‘gnosticism,’ I’m referring to a philosophical view of the world that thinks special, hidden knowledge is necessary to understand what is true. For Dr. Walton, this knowledge is found in his ‘lost world’; it can only be recovered by scholars like himself. Such knowledge provides true insight into reality.

Reality is thus split into two levels: what seems to be real versus “a deep reality that transcends events and history.” Those who do not accept Dr. Walton’s knowledge as he presents it are dismissed as lacking true understanding: they are misdirected, they use improper categories, they ask the wrong questions.

When one accepts his knowledge, however, it reveals divisions between categories previously assumed to be connected: faith and reality, function and material nature, language and event, theology and history.

Misunderstandings about these things have persisted for centuries in the church due to lack of knowledge. Now that this special knowledge is available, the church can begin to know the truth.

Yet that truth is not captured by a series of propositional statements describing past events (such as the Apostles’ Creed). Rather, it is movement on a pathway measured by one’s acceptance or rejection of this special knowledge.

As one accepts this knowledge, one is able to move past tensions assumed to exist between competing views of origins and history. Instead, when one realizes the Biblical text is describing ‘theological history’ rather than actual history, one is free to accept evolution as the true history of the universe.

According to Dr. Walton, Biblical truth is not dependent on real history. Instead, “truth is found in the narrator’s interpretation, which we accept by faith, regardless of whether or not we can reconstruct the events. His interests are not concentrated on human history but on God’s plans and purposes.”

This is the goal of gnostic thinking: the separation of human history from God’s plans and purposes.

In the first centuries, gnosticism said truth was found in knowing that God could not have entered time as a sweating, laughing, bleeding man. In these latter centuries, gnosticism says truth is found in knowing God could not have created dirt, water, and life in a few days, or formed two people immediately from dust and a rib, or destroyed the earth with a global flood during the 600th year of Noah’s life.

Gnosticism consistently seeks to substitute Biblical history with its own history. In the early church, it looked to the religions of Persia and the philosophies of Greece to provide a spiritual history of the world. In the modern era, it looks to the religion of evolutionary science and the philosophies of the Enlightenment to create a materialist history of the universe.

At its heart, however, gnosticism is at war with God’s real actions in history.

It is a heresy that stands in opposition to the Biblical view that teaches a direct connection between God’s original acts of creation and His absolute control of every event in time. This control includes accurate communication through His prophets about real events which He brings to pass. As Isaiah tells us:

“Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: ‘I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish, who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’ and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins.’” (Isaiah 44:24-26)

According to Isaiah, there is no essential division between function and matter, language and event, theology and history. One need only read Isaiah 40-48 to see that God forms real materials for specific functions. He explains His words and deeds in space and time through His servants the prophets. He directly connects theology to His actions in history.

Dr. Nicholas Perrin, a professor of Biblical studies at Wheaton who specializes in gnosticism in the early church, explains this essential connection between God and history:

“God made history and history matters. Apart from the conviction that our faith is a historical faith, we are left only to cast about. But, when we are fully persuaded that sacred history meshes with the history in which we live and move and have our being, that is when biblical faith becomes a real possibility…. The heart-and-mind value of reconnecting the biblical world with the ‘real world’ can hardly be overstated. Somehow in our confused modern-day thinking, we have managed to put asunder what God has joined together.”^[4]

Responding to a Gnostic World

Gnostic thinking always seems confusing. This is because it attempts to reorient essential structures in the creation order. Irenaeus observed this in the second century and knew the best way to reveal gnostic errors was to compare them to the Biblical text and to creation itself.

In light of that, here are three assertions we can make in response to Dr. Walton:

1. God designed the world so that people can know the past through language.

The doctrine of creation teaches that God made the physical world using language. He then formed man in His image and gave him the ability to use words to know the world. This includes man’s capacity to record past events and accurately communicate them to others.

Our basic sense of ‘history’ as a record of past events (whether oral or written, simple or complex) is a result of being made in God’s image. It is trait we share with all people who have ever lived.

When we read in the year 2018 AD something that was written in 1440 BC, we instantly cross great distances of time and space. Even when languages and cultures are different, we have the unique ability to effectively translate meaning between them.

After all, God always intended history to be translated across culture and time. Jesus spoke one language, but the gospels were written in another. When Peter preached the first sermon, it was immediately translated into a dozen languages. The Bible itself is a collection of ancient Near Eastern documents written in three different languages over 1500 years by dozens of men from diverse cultures talking about real events in time. It is clear testimony to God’s overwhelming intent to communicate history through language.

In spite of this, Dr. Walton asserts our modern concept of ‘history’ cannot be applied to the ancient world.

He invokes his special knowledge to say that “no such thing as a historian existed in the ancient world” and “that which is important about events in the ancient world is not empirical in nature. They are more interested in what the observer could not see. That is, they are more inclined to use a metaphysical lens for reality, rather than an empirical one as we do…. The ancient world as a whole had a different way of knowing than we do.”

It is important to Dr. Walton’s gnostic interpretation that he separate our way of thinking about the past—even the way we know—from that of the ancient world. After all, if our normal sense of ‘history’ and ‘knowing’ does not apply to the ancients, how can we be sure what actually happened? According to Dr. Walton, we cannot.

This is a radically different worldview than that taught by Biblical authors who lived and wrote in the ancient world. They repeatedly say past events are knowable and communicable to future generations through language.

After the first Passover, Moses told the people to “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place…You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’” (Ex. 13:3,8) And later, as they journeyed toward Canaan, “Moses wrote down their starting places, stage by stage, by command of the Lord…” (Num 33:2)

Not only Moses, but Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all understood the concept of history and were fully aware of what they were doing: recording real events so future generations would know they actually happened.

In fact, we who live in the Western world received our unique approach to history from the Hebrews. This is recognized by scholars everywhere. As even liberal theologian Thorlief Boman writes, “put succinctly, it can be said that the Israelites gave the world historical religion.”^[5]

Dr. Walton’s claim to special knowledge about the ancient world breaks down when considering the Bible. Yet it also breaks down when considering non-Israelite ancient Near Eastern texts. There are two things to consider here:

First, most people are unaware that the vast majority of ancient texts are administrative documents such as contracts, laws, bills of sale, marriages, inventories, treaties, receipts, and agreements.^[6] They present a series of ancient cultures interested in dates, amounts, weights, measurements, costs, borders, names, and numerical accuracy. It is a world that used language in a recognizable, empirical way.

All sorts of basic assumptions about time, space, and language are embedded in economics, politics, and law. A contract records an agreement transacted in the past, a receipt records an item sold in the past, a deed records a piece of land bought in the past.They witness to an essential connection between language and history.

Second, in contrast to the abundance of administrative documents, only a fraction of non-Israelite literary texts exist with which Dr. Walton can draw his particular conclusions. For instance, he mentions monumental royal inscriptions created for pagan kings as a context for understanding Genesis. This is a curious comparison.

Dr. Noel Weeks, former Senior Lecturer of Ancient History at the University of Sydney, examined Dr. Walton’s methods and use of ancient Near Eastern texts, stating: “In summary I am not impressed by the whole approach…. There is no recognition of the difficulty of discerning a uniform mind of the ANE. Individual extra-biblical texts are turned into representations of the whole huge chronological and cultural span. Even more striking are claims that are simply false.”^[7]

Dr. Richard Averbeck, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, puts it succinctly: “The point is that material creation was of great concern in the ANE as well as in ancient Israel.”^[8]

In sum, Dr. Walton’s gnostic bifurcation of modern and ancient ways of knowing is the opposite of the Biblical witness and the creation order. Both demonstrate that all people were made in God’s image in order to communicate events to others through language across time.

After all, it is through historical events that God reveals Himself to man. This leads us to our second assertion.

1. Biblical narratives are authoritative because God ensured they were an accurate record of His words and actions in time.

The doctrine of revelation teaches that God reveals Himself both through the creation and through language. The former is ‘general revelation’ and states that people from all times and cultures can look at the natural world and perceive God’s power and nature. (Romans 1:19) The latter is ‘special revelation’ and states that God has spoken at different times and ways through His prophets, His apostles, and His Son. (Hebrews 1:1-2)

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^[1] Specifically Vern Poythress, Noel Weeks, Richard Averbeck, John Currid, Steve Boyd, et al.

^[2] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (IVP Academic, 2009) 131.

^[3] Respectively in The Lost World of Scripture (IVP Academic, 2013), The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP Academic, 2015), and The Lost World of the Flood (IVP Academic, 2018).

^[4] Andrew E. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (Concordia Publishing House, 2011) xxiv.

^[5] Thorlief Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (W.W. Norton & Co, 1960) 11.

^[6] Marc Van De Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History (Routledge, 1999), 12.

^[7] Noel Weeks, “The Bible and the ‘Universal’ Ancient World: A Critique of John Walton,” Westminster Theological Journal, 78 (2016), 26.

^[8] Richard E. Averbeck, “The Lost World of Adam and Eve: A Review Essay,” Themelios 40.2 (2015), 235.

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