Last year, our city paper had a running debate on the editorial page from readers reacting to a story about whether intelligent design could be taught in public schools as an alternative to evolution. I skimmed through the usual "pro" and "con" arguments, but then my eye fell on a letter whose author had apparently stumbled on an ingenious solution: "Why not just say that God created evolution?"
Sigh. From the wording of the letter I could tell the writer was very proud of herself for discovering a way out of a decades-old dilemma. But besides the fact that her formula wouldn't resolve the question of theism in the classroom, it's not really a satisfactory solution. Even if we adjust her statement to something slightly more refined, such as "God created through evolution," there are still problems.
In centuries past, scientists who rejected the Bible's creation account tended to believe that there was no creation, no beginning point. The world and its life forms had always been here. But over the last 200 years, advances in geology and astronomy have demonstrated that the Earth and the universe it inhabits could not have been around forever. Fossil discoveries further showed that many strange animals once walked the Earth and are now extinct, so species themselves have beginnings and ends. The view that all Earth's life forms share a common descent goes back to several generations before Charles Darwin. Once Darwin systematized the view and defended it with observations from nature, evolution quickly became the dominant atheistic explanation for how life came to be.
But not all scientists who were swayed by the evidence were atheists. And as the church reacted to the issue, ill-equipped to produce scientific data to the contrary, some theologians sought to harmonize evolution with Christianity. Denominations that were already liberal had little difficulty; the Bible could not stand in the way of progress, for they did not find it authoritative. The creation account in Genesis could simply be written off as myth or allegory.
Even among the emerging Fundamentalists, there were a few who did not see the biblical and scientific explanations as directly contrary. B. B. Warfield, who by all accounts was orthodox on every other doctrine, believed he had found a way to place the garden of Eden at the end of a long period of evolution, essentially by reinterpreting Genesis 2:7. With that verse out of the way, one could easily postulate that God created new species by gradually supplying new traits to existing species, and then guiding the process of natural selection so that the new traits came to dominate. On one single occasion, God breathed a soul into a caveman (who before that moment was merely an advanced animal), and that neanderthal became the human being we know as Adam. Adam was placed in the garden, Eve was genuinely created from Adam's rib, and the rest of the story is as we all learned it. The other hominids soon became extinct for reasons unknown, and the entire human race is descended from Adam and Eve. The great C. I. Scofield, who did much to popularize dispensationalism, insisted on the separate creation of man but allowed for animals to have a common evolutionary ancestor.
Theistic evolution may seem the only way out for those who truly believe in God but have been persuaded that evolution is a proven fact. For this reason I want to distinguish between two phenomena that are often (deliberately) confused. The first is evolution itself. It is demonstrably true that genetic variation and mutations occur that cause members of a species to differ. It is also true that some changes make an animal more or less likely to survive. People have observed that such differences, over several generations, can cause what was once a minority trait to become a majority trait in a species. Breeders have done this intentionally with dogs, cats, grain, and just about any other life we've domesticated. We've seen it happen with flies in laboratories, and with moths and birds in the wild. This is the "proof" that evolutionists usually cite to say their theory is a fact, but in reality, it only proves that change can occur within a species.
The other phenomenon is what I'll hereafter refer to as macroevolution. This is the idea that evolution, left to itself, can eventually produce new species, new families, even new phyla of animals and plants. Dark patches can become eyes, scales can become feathers, all through a long series of random mutations. Scientists have never observed such a change in kind through evolution, nor have they been able to produce it. Instead, there seems to be some sort of natural limit to how far an individual can deviate from its species and still be able to reproduce. I won't get into all the scientific and logical proof against macroevolution here, but suffice it to say, this is the theory that people are talking about when they speak about evolution as an explanation for the various life forms.
Evangelicals who are considering theistic evolution will presumably be less concerned with the logical problems outlined above than with what the Bible has to say on the subject. Since Warfield and Scofield found a way to believe in macroevolution while also maintaining the historical existence of Adam and Eve, and since the "age of the earth" debate is too prickly to get into here, the biblical issue hinges on several specific assertions in Genesis 1 and 2.
First of all, notice that God creates vegetation on day three, sea creatures and birds on day five, and mammals on day six. Notice especially the verb created (Heb. bara') in verse 21, and "let the earth bring forth" in verses 11 and 24. It is not difficult at all to surmise that these kinds of life did not descend from one another but were created separately. Birds did not descend from sea creatures, nor did mammals descend from previous life forms. The sequence of appearances matches what natural history would indicate, but the language rules out common descent.
So might not these four kinds of life have been created separately, and then evolved into the millions of forms we see today? The account answers this question in the negative. Ten times in five verses, the various life forms are said to reproduce "according to their kind" (le-minah). The word min here also appears in Genesis 6 to describe the variety of animals Noah was to take aboard the ark. It also appears throughout Leviticus 11, describing clean and unclean animals. In that list it is apparent that one animal name can accompany multiple "kinds": for example, there are several kinds of ravens in verse 15. In all cases, the word is specifically used to enumerate different species and not whole classes or phyla of life forms.
Regarding Genesis 1:27, we may say first of all that man was created in God's image, not made into God's image after being created. Secondly, man was made "male and female"; the creations of Adam and Eve were of the same type. It is hard to argue an evolutionary origin for Eve given the historicity of 2:21-22, so how could evolution be argued for Adam?
The other especially relevant verse is Genesis 2:7. Translated very literally (and retaining the last word), it reads: "Then Yahweh God formed a man dirtwise [i.e., out of dirt] from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a nephesh."
Two assertions in this verse are devastating to theistic evolution. The first is that God made Adam out of dirt. This is not merely stating that man's body is made entirely of natural elements–although that is an important implication. Man came immediately from lifelessness, and was not alive until God breathed on the body. Consider also that in death the body "returns" to the dirt (Gen. 3:19; Job 34:15; Psa. 104:29; Ecc. 12:7). Dead humans do not de-evolve into lower, soulless life forms but physically decompose into the ground from which they ultimately originate.
The second point is that only after God's breathing the breath of life does man become a nephesh. This word is traditionally translated soul, which we often say distinguishes man from the animals. But the word has a more general meaning in Hebrew, and has already appeared in Genesis 1:20-24, 30 to describe the animals. We might think of nephesh as identifying either mobile life or else as a brain or consciousness–whatever allows the "higher animals" to feel pleasure or pain, make decisions, etc. It is not synonymous with the imago Dei that man alone possesses. The upshot is that if Adam were a sort of ape-man before God's soul-breathing took place, he would have been a nephesh already. (For more examples, see Gen. 2:19 and 9:10.) Therefore, we dare not understand Genesis 2:7 to be describing the enlightenment of a lower life form but the formation of an individual human from lifeless matter to a fully operational, living human being. Moreover, he was created in the image of God according to the previous chapter, able to relate both to God and to creation in the role God assigned for him. Reading ahead, we soon find that Eve was miraculously created from Adam's body and that as his wife she became the mother of all [humans] who live.
Tracking the natural history of primates must be a difficult job. The "search for the missing link" has turned up many partial bones, misidentified remains, and even deliberate hoaxes. Reconstructing and classifying various hominids (human-like apes) involves a great deal of conjecture and supposition.
Even if there were (or even are) animals walking the earth who are physically midway between humans and apes, this represents not proof of evolution but simply discovery of a new kind of life. Since such traits as creativity, limited intelligence, the use of tools, burial of the dead, or even the use of language are not exclusive to humans, associating them with hominids should not worry us. For the Christian there are two choices: either hominids are actually humans descended from Adam and Eve, or else they are merely extinct animals who happen to resemble humans. Complete skeletons identifiable as Homo sapiens date back to relatively recent times, within the last 30,000 years–or less if one rejects the dating methods used. These remains would simply be early humans and pose no threat even to a young-earth creationist view. The more ancient finds are the fragments and more gorilla-like remains, and should be handled no differently than dinosaur fossils. Specifically, if there was death in the animal kingdom before Adam's fall, then these hominids died long before Adam came on the scene. If animal death originated in Eden, then the hominids died some time thereafter. The discovery of a new jawbone or a body frozen in a glacier is simply not a cause for concern.
Like evolution, this is a term with more than one definition. Some people use progressive creationist to identify anyone who believes in a billion-year-old Earth. Old-earthers generally understand the days of Genesis 1 to refer to long periods of time. They would say that God created each species separately, but gradually so as to allow the Earth time to adapt to the new life forms. This way nature was prepared for mankind by the time God created Adam. Advocates of this view include J. P. Moreland and Hugh Ross, and I myself find this view compelling in light of both biblical and observed truth. But true progressive creationists are those who allow a moderate amount of evolution to take place, usually at the family level. So, for example, God created the first catlike animal, from which descended the lions, tigers, housecats, ocelots, etc., but dogs and cats are too different to have a common ancestor. Millard Erickson is an evangelical who prefers this view based on fossil evidence.
As an old-earther who rejects macroevolution, I reject the term progressive creationist as a general description of old-earthers because of its associations with Erickson's model. It is confusing and a little dishonest to use those words to identify Hugh Ross and others who believe each species was created separately. In some cases the Hebrews may have classified animals differently than we do, and so the difference between a genus and a species may not be cut-and-dried. But the biblical usage of kind simply does not allow so general an understanding as family–particularly a family as widely diverse as cats. Mind you, the theological implications of animal-evolution are not earth-shattering as long as humans are kept separate. And since our English translations are sort of vague on this point, it's more a matter of misinterpretation than outright unbelief. You can be a progressive creationist and still be an inerrantist–just not a very consistent one. But for a seminary-trained evangelical to concede evolution to this degree seems to indicate a lack of submission to clear biblical teaching. I'm not picking on Erickson here; he's an excellent defender of the doctrine of God, and he's often first in line to confront evangelicals who drift to the left. But it seems to me the progressive creationists are in a very precarious position and may over time become full theistic evolutionists with the discovery of a few more "transitional forms."
An evolutionary understanding of human origins is ultimately destructive to Christianity if one embraces its full implications. I conclude this article by listing just a few of the problems an evangelical evolutionist must face:
For a concise statement of my beliefs about creation, see my Declaration of Faith.
