Dennis Priebe is an assistant professor of religion at Pacific Union College, Angwin, California.
Evolution has become the prevailing view of origins. Whether on television, in reputable nature libraries, or on guided tours in national parks, the basic assumptions of evolution are taken for granted. In evolutionary thought, allowance may be made for the existence of a Superior Being, but not one who is personally involved in the life processes here on earth. Life is considered to have evolved by chance from random behavior of atoms, molecules, and cells.

Because of the massive amount of scientific investigation that is said to support evolution, many dedicated believers in the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures feel compelled to accept the evolutionary theory. However, this is an uncomfortable position for anyone who accepts the claims of the Bible. Some Christians, not wanting to give up their belief in an interested, involved God, have worked out a compromise—a belief that retains parts of both viewpoints. This compromise is called theistic evolution. It presumes that God created life in the beginning and then set the processes of random change in motion, knowing that life would eventually evolve into man. Those holding such a view must of necessity consider the first chapter of Genesis to be a myth.

It should be noted that there are a number of branches or varieties of theistic evolution and a wide range of concepts involved in them. Al though they all come under the general heading of theistic evolution, a subscriber to one of the new theories might even deny that he believes in theistic evolution. This presents a problem in defining clearly what is entailed in the various branches of the original theory. We are apt to hear terms such as orthogenesis, nomogenesis, emergent evolution, or creative evolution.

A large group of evangelical Christians, sensitive to the traditional opposition to evolution in their churches, have sought, through what they call progressive creation, to circumvent this opposition while at the same time embracing the essential framework of the evolutionary system. A similar concept is called threshold evolution. The basic idea behind these concepts is that while life was developing over a vast span of geological time, God intervened at various occasions to create something new, since the evolutionary process could not accomplish the necessary changes unaided. Some believe that this intervention was very gradual, others believe that God created entirely new forms from time to time, much in the manner described in Genesis 1, but certainly not in six days. 1

The important thing to remember is that all of these theories share one common purpose—to combine the scriptural record in an involved God with the slow development necessary to the theory of evolution. The names by which these various theories are called cannot obscure the fact that they all fall under the heading of theistic evolution.

In an effort to give Christian young people some resource mate rial to use in their discussions with non-Christian young people, one proponent of theistic evolution has written a small book entitled Evolution and the High School Student. The following statements are drawn from this work, which is apparently intended to defend the God of Creation.

"The Bible gives no evidence upon which we can draw to deter mine the time of Adam's creation. Genealogical tables of the Bible, in the Hebrew usage, list only representative ancestors and are not a complete listing. So the Bible permits millions of years as easily as thousands, and is not helpful in deciding this question as to when Adam was created." 2

"Apparently each day in Genesis was millions of years' duration, if the normal system of dating fossils is accepted. In fact, snails appear in the fossil record 450,000,000 years ago! Man is perhaps up to a million years old! So we are talking about days 100,000,000 years long! ... To me it appears that God's special creative acts occurred many times during six long geological periods, capped by the creation of Adam and Eve perhaps a million or more years ago. This idea seems to do justice both to the Bible and to what geologists and anthropologists currently believe. If they change their dates up or down, it will make no difference to this belief, unless to move Adam's age forward or back wards." 3

It seems to me that these attempts to defend creationism do even greater damage than the popular at tempts to sell pure evolution, be cause they place the credibility of the Bible and respected Christian leaders behind a revised theory of evolution that is supposed to be acceptable for Christians.

Creation and evolution incompatible

There are several serious problems with the theory that God started the evolutionary cycle. The basic point is that evolution is in compatible with Biblical creation. The two views are too opposite to be fitted together comfortably. Anyone is free to choose one or the other viewpoint, but it is impossible to believe both. The basic premise of evolution is an ascending line, which could be called progression, development, or improvement; the Biblical view of Creation and the Fall is a descending line, which is deterioration or degeneration from perfection. The two systems, advancement and degeneration, proceed in totally opposite directions.

In evolution there is no place for a perfect Adam and Eve created in God's image. Man is the result of gradual progress involving many intermediate steps along the way. But when could creatures evolving to higher planes of existence be said to fall into sin? Could humanoid apes sin? If so, at what stage of their development? When did they pass from animal instincts to a high enough level of reason for God to hold them accountable for what they did? The basic question is How could they fall? Can the concept of sins even exist in the evolutionary world? If the unifying theme of the Bible, the underlying concept holding the sixty-six books together, is the story of salvation, then the question immediately facing those who hold the evolutionary view is Salvation from what?

Why would Christ need to die to save man, if man is gradually over coming the animalistic parts of this nature? How can beings who are handicapped by traces of animal nature be held accountable or be punished for sin? Instead of personally intervening when man reached a hypothetical plateau where he must assume responsibility for his actions, God could have waited until the human race rose above such traits and progressed beyond crudity and cruelty.

Several suggestions for resolving these dilemmas have been offered by those who subscribe to one or an other variant of theistic evolution, but all of them must distort the Biblical picture to be convincing. The Bible is basically an account of how Christ provided an escape from the control of sin, which we call the plan of salvation. This is the golden thread tying the sixty-six books together into one basic theme.

No matter how theistic evolution may try to explain it, the Biblical concept of salvation is unnecessary within that theory. Christ would be merely fostering the evolutionary process, not restoring a once-noble but fallen race of beings created in the image of God. 4 Kenneth Taylor also states, "Re member, too, that the Bible's principal purpose is to reveal to all man kind the kindness and power of God to forgive our sins under the conditions the Bible sets forth. There is no controversy about this. Whatever you decide about evolution has no relationship to this far-reaching, utterly basic fact of sin and salvation." 5 This statement, it seems to me, completely overlooks the diametrically opposite principles underlying evolution and Biblical salvation.

Evolutionary concepts and Biblical testimony just cannot be poured into one mold. The only way to combine evolution and Christianity is to submerge one into the other. One denies the validity of the other. And of course evolutionary thought is basically non-Christian, because it contradicts the Bible, the Sourcebook of all Christian teachings, and its clear concept of the God of Special Creation.

Testimony of inspired writers

A major source of controversy among Christians lies in the interpretation given to the first few chapters of Genesis. Do they present historical fact or symbolic legend? It is a well-established hermeneutic principle that the later inspired writers are the best interpreters of previous inspired material. How do other Biblical authors treat the re cord of Genesis I? 6 In discussing the foundation of marriage, Christ said, "'Did you never read that the Creator at the be ginning made them male and female?' " (Matt. 19:4, Goodspeed).* Luke 3 presents a serious genealogical record of the ancestry of man, listing Adam as the son of God. In Romans 5:12 Paul refers to the fall of man in historical terms. In speaking about the relative place of men and women in the Christian church, Paul bolsters his point by referring back to the record of Genesis 2 regarding the creation of woman: "For man was not made from woman, but woman from man" (1 Cor. 11:8, Goodspeed).

In chapter 15 Paul refers to the creation of Adam in exactly the same terms used in Genesis 2: "This is also what the Scripture says: 'The first man Adam became a living creature.' . . . The first man is of the dust of the earth" (verses 45-47, Goodspeed). 2 Corinthians 11:3 and 1 Timothy 2:13 and 14 also describe Creation and the Fall in Genesis terms. Peter also states his belief in the historicity of the Genesis version of Creation and the Flood: "For they wilfully ignore the fact that long ago there existed heavens and an earth which had been formed at God's command out of water and by water, by which also that world was destroyed, through being flooded with water" (2 Peter 3:5, 6, Goodspeed).

In addition to these examples, it can be demonstrated quite easily that other Bible writers (such as Christ and the New Testament authors) considered Genesis 1 to be a historical, factual record of Creation. If part of the Bible mistakenly considers other sections to be factual when they are myth, how can the Bible be an inspired, reliable re cord? How could we feel really safe in trusting it? Could Jesus have been divine if He could not tell the difference between fact and symbol? And how can we trust the apostles if they associate their teachings with untrue legends and myths?

Length of days

Another problem is the length of days in Genesis 1. Kenneth Taylor states, "The question often arises among creationists as to the length of the 'days' of creation mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 1). Were these 24-hour days? The answer lies in the fact that the Hebrew word translated 'day' in the first chapter of Genesis can equally well be translated 'period of time.' How long is a 'period of time'? The word is completely indefinite. It might refer to 24 hours and it might be millions of years. Apparently each day in Genesis was of millions of years' duration." 7

Taylor seems to ignore several points. It has been estimated that in 95 percent of the occurrences of the word yom in the Old Testament re cord, the literal meaning (24 hours) is clearly indicated. There are two devices in Genesis 1 that place yom in the literal category. First, the boundaries of the time period in each case are limited by the terms "evening" and "morning." Second, the noun yom is always modified by a numerical adjective, "first day," "second day," et cetera. In all the other cases in the Old Testament where these ordinal numbers are used to modify yom, and there are more than 200 cases, the day is always a literal 24-hour period. Either of these devices should suffice to limit the meaning of yom in Genesis 1 to a solar day, and when both are used there is no longer any question. From both a grammatical and contextual standpoint, the day-age theory is unsupportable.

Evolution emphasizes natural explanations for the world's events and phenomena; the Bible says that life began supernaturally and that God continues to be involved in the affairs of earth. These beliefs are incompatible with each other, thus forcing us to make a choice. Al though each may have problems, as well as good scientific evidence associated with it, we must make a choice between the two as far as personal belief is concerned. Belief in either one is ultimately an act of faith; it must go beyond reason.

I understand God to be straight forward and honest and the Bible to be His inspired book, an accurate record of history, so therefore I simply take God's word about Creation. I do not consider it a myth or a fairy tale. My position is based on the reliability of God's Word. I believe that is trustworthy.

Notes:

1 Henry M. Morris, Scientific Creationism (San Diego, Calif.: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), pp. 216, 220.

2 Kenneth N. Taylor, ed., Evolution and the High School Student (Wheaton, III.: Tyndale House Publishers. 1969), pp. 28-31.

3 Ibid., pp. 49, 50.

4 Gerald Wheeler, "Is God an Absentee Landlord?" These Times, January, 1971, p. 29.

5 Taylor, op. cit., p. 54.

6 Wheeler, op. cit., pp. 28-30.

7 Taylor, op. cit., p. 49.

 

* Texts credited to Goodspeed are from Smith and Goodspeed, The Complete Bible: An American Translation. Copyright 1939 by the University of Chicago.


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Dennis Priebe is an assistant professor of religion at Pacific Union College, Angwin, California.

February 1978

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