"The following open letter is CMI’s response to an article published in The Scotsman by the Right Reverend Richard Holloway,a former Bishop of Edinburgh (1986–2000), professor of divinity, Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and patron of LGBT Youth Scotland.
Dear Richard Holloway,
I recently read your rather condescending “Letter to the author of the book of Genesis.” The way you have misunderstood Genesis
bothers me greatly. In fact, not understanding it has brought the church you once served to a moment of great danger... Furthermore, the “Author of Genesis” to whom you addressed your letter didn’t just live three thousand years ago as you state, for ultimately He is God—and He is alive and well today.
You describe Genesis as a “great poem”, “parable”, “fable” even a “great fiction”, but this is not how Jesus, or the New Testament writers read Genesis. They treated it as history, and built their theology on it.
You quote Genesis 1:27–28, but mistakenly claim that following God’s instructions will result in the planet’s destruction. How you twist Scripture Richard! The opposite is true: rebelling against the Maker’s instructions has caused all the problems. God in His wisdom gave humans—in their perfect, sinless state—stewardship and responsibility for creation. It was never meant to be a license to destroy as you so wilfully and incorrectly interpret it.
Genesis is clear, and you even quote it: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). This is not fiction.
When leaders in the church stopped viewing Genesis as historical, they consequently left the moral implications of its truth claims undefended.
This resulted in society’s moral decline, which included the legalized murder of the unborn.
To redefine basic biological reality is foolhardy indeed, and we are seeing the consequences of this damaging confusion and irresponsible thinking in society today. Again, your own writings question the wisdom of a divinely ordained distinction between the sexes.
And here you have the priorities reversed, because you consider sin against the environment as the highest crime. The most sacred religion in your eyes is worship of the Creation, rather than the Creator. Romans chapter one describes this brand of heresy all too well (Romans 1:25–26) and its resulting moral decay in society.
Finally, you rejoice in the fact that people are rebel sinners:
You are a blind leader of the blind Richard. There is nothing to rejoice in here. I hope many readers will have the presence of mind to peer through your sarcasm.
You conclude your anti-Genesis diatribe by quoting from Isaiah 11:6, which describes the future restoration of what was lost at the Curse; this is poetry as you rightly state.
However, poetry doesn’t make the future hope of a restored Creation any the less real, because it isn’t mere poetry, rather it is divinely inspired prophecy. Only the Creator can promise to restore His Creation. It was marred by sin but “will be set free from its bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:21)—when Christ comes again and restores all things.
Instead of building on Genesis and the hope of God’s unchanging Word, you have chosen the inescapable futility that goes hand-in-hand with having the evolutionary process as your foundation."
Gavin Cox/CMI
Dear Richard Holloway,
I recently read your rather condescending “Letter to the author of the book of Genesis.” The way you have misunderstood Genesis
You describe Genesis as a “great poem”, “parable”, “fable” even a “great fiction”, but this is not how Jesus, or the New Testament writers read Genesis. They treated it as history, and built their theology on it.
You quote Genesis 1:27–28, but mistakenly claim that following God’s instructions will result in the planet’s destruction. How you twist Scripture Richard! The opposite is true: rebelling against the Maker’s instructions has caused all the problems. God in His wisdom gave humans—in their perfect, sinless state—stewardship and responsibility for creation. It was never meant to be a license to destroy as you so wilfully and incorrectly interpret it.
Genesis is clear, and you even quote it: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). This is not fiction.
When leaders in the church stopped viewing Genesis as historical, they consequently left the moral implications of its truth claims undefended.
This resulted in society’s moral decline, which included the legalized murder of the unborn.
To redefine basic biological reality is foolhardy indeed, and we are seeing the consequences of this damaging confusion and irresponsible thinking in society today. Again, your own writings question the wisdom of a divinely ordained distinction between the sexes.
And here you have the priorities reversed, because you consider sin against the environment as the highest crime. The most sacred religion in your eyes is worship of the Creation, rather than the Creator. Romans chapter one describes this brand of heresy all too well (Romans 1:25–26) and its resulting moral decay in society.
Finally, you rejoice in the fact that people are rebel sinners:
You are a blind leader of the blind Richard. There is nothing to rejoice in here. I hope many readers will have the presence of mind to peer through your sarcasm.
You conclude your anti-Genesis diatribe by quoting from Isaiah 11:6, which describes the future restoration of what was lost at the Curse; this is poetry as you rightly state.
However, poetry doesn’t make the future hope of a restored Creation any the less real, because it isn’t mere poetry, rather it is divinely inspired prophecy. Only the Creator can promise to restore His Creation. It was marred by sin but “will be set free from its bondage to corruption” (Romans 8:21)—when Christ comes again and restores all things.
Instead of building on Genesis and the hope of God’s unchanging Word, you have chosen the inescapable futility that goes hand-in-hand with having the evolutionary process as your foundation."
Gavin Cox/CMI
