THEISTIC EVOLUTION - 1
Let me begin by saying that I have not the slightest sympathy for the theory of evolution and I cannot imagine ever believing that it is so. From first grade through my first graduate degree I attended conservative religious schools that opposed the teaching of evolution. To this day, I have never attended a single class in which evolution was taught. However, most Christian students do not share my experience. Those raised on both fundamentalist religious teaching and mainstream biology often feel forced to choose between what they perceive as faith and knowledge, dogma and Darwin, spiritual formulation and scientific fact. That conflict is intensified when Bible teachers and science teachers alike present their respective materials as mutually exclusive. Faced with such pressure, many thoughtful students either decide they cannot continue to believe in God or conclude that they must abandon all confidence in science.
This dilemma is both tragic and unnecessary according to Dr. Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006). Collins himself grew up in an agnostic home and became an atheist as a science student in college. However, as his scientific studies progressed, he began to contemplate realities he observed in the laboratory and also within human consciousness that pointed him toward a recognition of God. Assisted by the writings of C. S. Lewis and others, Collins eventually became an evangelical Christian. Now he grieves at the battle between science and faith, a struggle which he insists ought never to have existed in the first place. The key to "a comfortable synthesis," he believes, lies in recognizing the roles and limits of both science and faith. Regarding origins, he says, it is the role of science to answer the questions "when?" and "how?" and the role of faith to answer "who?" and "why?"
Having seriously studied the Bible for more than 50 years, I wholeheartedly agree with Collins' assessment of which questions the Bible intends to answer and which answers science is equipped to resolve. I also agree with Collins when he tells Christianity Today that "God is the author of all truth. You can find him in the laboratory as well as in the cathedral. He's the God of the Bible; he's the God of the genome. He did it all." Despite that agreement, I remain enormously uncomfortable with Collins' suggestion that Theistic Evolution provides the framework that successfully bridges faith and science. Yet I was equally surprised to learn that the great evangelical apologist B. B. Warfield, who practically wrote the modern doctrine of biblical inerrancy, was a theistic evolutionist. I am not an evolutionist. But I am convinced that God could have made all the earthly creatures -- including ourselves -- by any means he chose. And not being a scientist myself, I would be extremely sorry if I mistakenly misused the Bible in a way that unnecessarily discredited it to someone who knew far more about science than I ever will.
THEISTIC EVOLUTION - 2
This is one of those topics that tends to generate more heat than light, a subject about which we often feel more strongly and deeply than we think. That is neither particularly good nor bad. It is simply a reality of which we do well to be aware. A Bible class teacher drove the distinction home to me about 25 years ago when he showed the class a picture of an amoeba-like being and asked, "How would you feel if I told you that you developed from this over a period of time?" Several class members reacted quite passionately and I was one of them. After we had calmed down, the teacher explained. "This is a picture of a human zygote that results from the union of a sperm cell and an egg cell. You did develop from this over a period of nine months." He then reminded us that his original question inquired concerning our feelings, not our thoughts, and pointed out that our feelings can greatly affect our abilities to listen carefully and to think straight.
The absence of inflammatory rhetoric and emotional manipulation accounts in part for the strong impression Dr. Francis S. Collins made on me in his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006). Unlike some advocates I have read, both for and against evolution, Dr. Collins impressed me as a man who genuinely loves his fellow-believers as well as his profession as a scientist. A former atheist who now openly identifies himself as an evangelical Christian, Collins served as head of the Human Genome Project (HGP), a 13-year undertaking coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. In that capacity he led the way in identifying and mapping the three billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA -- the very building blocks of life.
Because of his intensive experience in the field of genetics, perhaps even more than his Yale Ph.D. in physical chemistry and his M.D. degree, Collins speaks to me with scientific authority, yet also with gentleness and apparently-genuine concern. I am also impressed that while some 60% of practicing American scientists do not profess belief in God, Collins ignores political pressure and kindly and unashamedly urges the evidence (includiing, in his mind, theistic evolution) which he believes leads to that conclusion.
As stated in the previous gracEmail, I am not persuaded that evolutionary theory is correct and I have no personal desire to convince anyone else that it is so. As a non-scientist myself, I am entirely dependent on experts for data regarding science and its findings. I confess that I find it significant that competent scientists, seemingly comparable to each other in education, intelligence and piety, may be found advocating the alternatives popularly known as Creationism, Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution. This fact alone causes me to conclude that, at the very least, I cannot be dogmatic in my own scientific ignorance. It also makes me distrustful of anyone whose pronouncements concerning the "how" and "when" of origins suggest that every educated, intelligent and pious person must surely share his or her same opinions.
THEISTIC EVOLUTION - 3
For those of us who consider it divinely authoritative, the message of the Bible ultimately matters more than anything any scientist might say. Indeed, for us one clear word of scripture teaching outweighs all the pronouncements of science combined. But merely saying that does not resolve the question whether God used the means of evolution as a tool in his process of creation. It is very possible for people to read their own opinions into the Bible, all the while sincerely thinking they are merely hearing what the Bible itself intends to teach. This happens every day on a wide variety of subjects. Nor is it necessary always to take the Bible literally in order to take it seriously. We all understand that to be true when we read in Revelation concerning the End. We do not expect to walk on streets of actual gold, for example, and few evangelicals really think that lost souls will encounter fire such as we know by present experience. When the Bible speaks concerning these realities at the future horizon of time and eternity, it usually speaks in metaphor -- and we think it none the less true for that reason.
Similarly, as Claus Westerman has noted in his 46-page booklet, Beginning and End in the Bible (Fortress 1972), it should not take us by surprise if God also speaks in metaphor in Genesis when describing events at the past horizon of time and eternity. I am not saying that the Genesis creation accounts are figurative or metaphorical, but I am saying that those ancient sagas are no less true and real if that should be the case. Early church fathers Origen and St. Augustine interpreted them as being metaphor, as did B. B. Warfield, a father of modern Fundamentalism and a pioneer advocate of biblical inerrancy. Genesis "teaches" whatever its author(s) intended to convey, not whatever 21st century readers might think they hear it saying. That means the creation stories of Genesis 1-2 were not written in response to Charles Darwin or Carl Sagan, They were instead a response to pagan creation stories such as the Gilgamesh Epic. Knowing that, we can understand their intended message to be that the one true God of Israel created all that exists and that this truth contains life-shaping implications for our relationship with him, our fellow-humans and the rest of creation. It is simply not fair for us to ask Genesis questions ("how?" and "when?") which it was not written to answer. As it happens, the questions it does answer ("who?" and "why?") are still being asked today and its ancient answers remain as true and as relevant as ever.
The truth and relevancy of Genesis can be understood and appreciated whether one reads it as literal history or as sacred metaphor. That was what I observed nearly 40 years ago while taking classes simultaneously at Covenant Theological Seminary and at Eden Theological Seminary, both in St. Louis County, Missouri. At Covenant, I had an accelerated class on Genesis taught by visiting professor Francis Schaeffer. At Eden, I was reading the theology of Genesis by Reinhold Niebuhr, who formerly studied at that institution. Schaeffer read Genesis 1-3 as historical narrative; Niebuhr read it as sacred metaphor or myth. But what did it mean to these men witlh such divergent approaches? According to Schaeffer and Niebuhr alike, it meant that God, who exists outside creation, made all that exists. We are part of creation and are wholly dependent on God. However, humans have lusted for independence and have tried to live as if they did not depend on God, as a result spoiling their relationship with God, each other and with the rest of creation.
So we return to the original question that launched these thoughts. Can someone who believes in God and accepts the Bible as his word also believe in evolution as the process by which God brought into being the diversity of animal life on earth, including human beings? The answer must surely be "Yes," for there are many who do. I am not one of them. Not because I believe theistic evolution is irreconcilable with Scripture, but because I personally find special creation more appealing and more credible than the story that evolution offers as an alternative. As a 63-year-old non-scientist who has studied the Bible for a half-century, that is what I think. Others are entitled to their own opinions.
However, I want to end this little series with a song -- not a doctrinal proposition or a scientific theory but an affirmation of faith. That song is titled This Is My Father's World. To hear the tune and read the words, just click here or go to http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/t/i/tismyfw.htm .
For more on faith and science, click here.