Prof. Bruce K. Waltke Forced Out of His Seminary

I have only met Prof. Bruce K. Waltke a few times at the SBL meetings, but he seemed a very nice person. Like most Hebrew Bible scholars, I also regularly refer to the Hebrew Syntax volume that he co-authored with Michael Patrick O'Connor. I was shocked to learn recently that Waltke has been forced out of Reformed Theological Seminary. The dismissal of such a well-known, and well-published scholar is really newsworthy. He was forced out for expressing his judgment that faith and evolution are compatible, and that evangelical Christianity could face a crisis for not coming to accept science. "If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult ... some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God's Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness," he stated in a video that has now been removed from the website of the BioLogos Foundation. I first learned about "BioLogos" in October of 2008, when Dr. Francis Collins, head of the human genome mapping project, endorsed the group in a talk he gave here at Virginia Seminary. In that same talk he presented some slides of the genetic evidence that establishes evolution as unquestionably true. Collins worries very much about what will happen to conservative Christian students when they get to college and see this evidence, conservative Christians who have been convinced that one must choose between the Bible and evolution. The BioLogos Foundation is trying to popularize the alternative view that Christianity and evolution can be embraced together.