Carolyn Arends and the Dangerous Waters of Contemporary Music
December 11, 2012
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061
866-295-4143,
fbns@wayoflife.org
Wrestling With Angels
Carolyn Arends (b. 1968) is a contemporary singer/songwriter who has released nine music albums and two books, including Wrestling with Angels, which is also the title of her bimonthly column published by Christianity Today. She is a reviewer for Christianity Today Movies. She has won two Dove Awards and six GMA Canada Covenant Awards. 

She credits Billy Graham for helping change her view from that of six-day, young-earth creation to theistic evolution. In a November 2012 blog she explained how that she discussed the issue with her son as follows:

“‘Have you considered the possibility that God may have used evolutionary processes in his creation of the world?’ I asked. 

“‘No! Mom! I believe the Bible!’ 

“‘Me too,’ I assured him. ‘But I think it's possible that Genesis 1 and 2 are more about the who of creation than the how.’

“Later that night, I read him something Billy Graham wrote in 1964: ‘I don’t think that there's any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think … we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say …. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story …. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process … makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God.’ 

“... it's actually been biblical scholarship that has convinced me that Genesis does not prescribe any particular scientific view. A significant number of Hebrew scholars who affirm the authority of Scripture argue that the biblical creation accounts simply are not concerned with the science of creation at all, having been written long before the dawn of enlightenment empiricism” (Carolyn Arends, “God Did It, But I Don’t Know Exactly How the World Was Created,” Nov. 19, 2012).


In 1966, Billy Graham repeated his heresy of theistic evolution in an interview with the United Church Observer: “Either at a certain moment in evolution God breathed into one particular ape-man who was Adam, or God could have taken a handful of dust and created a man just like that” (“Cooperative Evangelism at Harringay,” United Church Observer, July 1966).

Arends admits that her view of biblical inspiration has been transformed by the evolution issue so that she no longer sees the Bible as one Book that is a divinely inspired “textbook” in all points. 

“... the Bible is not a book; it’s a library containing books of many different dates and genres. That's why it’s not inconsistent to read Genesis 1 and 2 as an (inspired) ancient Near Eastern cosmology that poetically declares Yahweh to be the Creator, while reading the Gospels as (inspired) first-century, biographical-historical eyewitness accounts of events. ... Granted, allowing the possibility of evolutionary creation is fraught with difficulty. It requires a hermeneutic more nuanced than reading every genre of the Bible as a postenlightenment textbook.”

This view of “inspiration” is not the doctrine that was taught by the Lord Jesus and the apostles. Jesus quoted from every part of Genesis and never so much as hinted that any of it should be considered “poetic.” Genesis presents a literal six-day creation and a literal fall and there is no possibility of reading those events in a poetic sense without destroying the language itself. “An evening and a morning” cannot be made into millions of years by any sound method of interpretation. Genesis tells us that man was made in God’s image from the very day of his creation at God’s hand and he was never a part of the animal kingdom. 

Theistic evolution is a capitulation to the myth of evolution, which is not true science and is not supported by
any scientific facts but is predicated upon an unbelieving interpretation of the facts. 

The dangerous waters of contemporary worship music is evident in this frightful account. Arends not only is corrupting her own son’s faith in the infallible Word of God through the illicit bridges she has built to liberal biblical scholarship, she is also corrupting the faith of those who come into contact with her through her music and blogs. 

“Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33).



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