Theistic Evolution and the Authority of Scripture

Does theistic evolution undermine the authority of scripture? First of all, why do I even ask the question? It came up during a conversation on Facebook. Where all good questions come from!

The answer to the question is NO. 

Why doesn't theistic evolution (or evolutionary creationism) undermine the authority of scripture? Because the Bible is not a science book. Genesis one was never intended to tell us about how the universe was created. 

The Bible is a reliable source of information about God and his plan for humanity. The first chapter of Genesis is a creation hymn of the ancient Israelites that was intended to differentiate them from the rest of the Ancient Near Eastern World. It was to show that one God created the world instead of the pantheon of gods that other civilizations claimed.

Even though I firmly believe in evolutionary creationism, I take the Bible very seriously. The Bible was inspired by God. It is not to be taken lightly. But, neither is it to be always read literally. Every portion of the Bible was written in a certain time and place and to a certain people. It is our responsibility as readers of the Bible to learn all we can about the context of the text so that we can make a reasonable interpretation.

So, when we read the first chapter in Genesis, we see that it is a poetic hymn written by a pre-scientific people. (Note: Calling ancient Israelites "pre-scientific" is not intended to be disparaging. These people were intelligent, but their culture had not yet developed the scientific method so their understanding of the universe was different from ours.) Reading the Bible this way is not frivolous or "loose". It is trying to understand the text for what it is.

For more reading on this topic, I would highly recommend anything on the BioLogs website or anything by Denis Lamoreux, a theologian and biologist. 

Your thoughts??

CCM

Embracing the Gray

And I don’t mean gray hair!

Do you ever wish that God gave us a textbook of systematic theology instead of the Bible?  I do.  I’m not sure why God chose to give us the Bible in the form it is in, but the consequence is that we have a lot to discuss about the Bible and what it means.  (I suspect that part of God’s intention was to force us to work at relationships instead of making it easy.  Kind of like marriage.  When a couple works through all kinds of difficulties and troubles, they usually end up with a better relationship in the long-run.)  It seems a little odd to me that the book that points us to Jesus is, in many ways, a story book.  Lots of stories.  Put together over a long period of time.  Sometimes it’s hard to know what a text actually means. 

The basic plan of salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection is pretty clear.  Beyond that, though, there are lots of places that are just difficult to understand.  Humans like, I think, to be certain about things.  As I grew up in Evangelicalism, I learned a lot of things that were very black and white (many from my church, less from my parents).

1. The earth is about 6000 years old and God created it and all life in six, literal, 24-hour days.

2. The flood was worldwide and all geological formations that we see were made by the flood.

3. People who engage in practices beside married heterosexuality can’t possibly be saved.

4. The plan for the end of the world is spelled out in Revelation, Daniel, and a couple of Paul’s letters and can be predicted, albeit not down to the day.

5. Baptism must be by immersion after someone prays the “Sinner’s Prayer”.

6. We can know about other people’s eternal situation based on whether or not they have prayed the “Sinner’s Prayer”.

As I’ve gotten older and more mature, I’ve learned that very few things are as black and white as I thought.  There are gray areas.  And it’s not necessarily bad.  I have changed my mind on some of my beliefs, but, while I still hold on to some others, I realize that believers in Jesus can and will have differences.

1. I believe that the scientific discoveries that show that the universe and earth are very old and that biological evolution occurred are the best explanations for origins.  But, others believe in an old earth but don’t accept that biological evolution occurred.  But, when we try to be true to the original meaning of the text by it’s original authors (inspired by God), what are the truths that we can get from Genesis 1-3?  Did Adam literally exist?  If not, what does that do to our interpretation of the New Testament references to Adam?  Origins is definitely a gray area.  There are lots of questions, few concrete answers, and lots and lots of opinions.

2. I believe that the story of Noah describes a local flood.  The science doesn’t support a worldwide flood, and the text is part of the early sections of Genesis that may or may not have contained literal descriptions of events.  That doesn’t mean that I believe that it’s unimportant or uninspired!  So, another gray area.

3. I think the Bible is pretty clear that we are only to express our sexuality through marriage to a partner of the opposite sex.  Yet, others disagree.  And they love Jesus.  (And, you have to admit that the examples of sexual relationships in the Old Testament show a much wider variety of “acceptable” sexual practices than we now have.  When a woman is raped nowadays, the perpetrator is (hopefully) brought to justice.  The biblical rules say that they should get married.  Strange.)  While I don’t consider this very gray in my world, I know others who worship Jesus and disagree.  But, I can still worship with them.

4. As we all saw a few weeks ago when the Rapture did NOT occur, there are widely varying opinions on when the world will end and how.  There are those who believe that the events foretold in Revelation have already occurred.  Others believe that Revelation needs to be understood symbolically.  This isn’t an issue that I spend much time and energy on.  It’s definitely a gray area.

5. I still believe that the Bible teaches baptism by immersion after someone has clearly accepted the Christian faith as their own.  Yet, I can see how paedo-baptism (infant baptism) got started and how it is still used in Reformed churches today.  And, apparently, some people do credo-baptism (baptism after the person has professed their faith), but still sprinkle.  The one part of the baptism controversy that is black and white to me is that baptism is NOT what saves us.  However, we can agree on salvation while still disagreeing about baptism.  More gray.

6. A person can know about their own eternal salvation because they can know what they believe and have a relationship with God.  However, we can’t know the eternal status of other people.  If you have seen any of the controversy about the book Love Wins (which I haven’t read), you will have seen how concerned people are to be sure they know what happens after death to other people.  Certainly, we can have some clue as to a person’s destiny, but we can only judge by what we can see on the outside.  God judges the inside.  And here’s what makes this really gray – what happens to people who have never heard the Gospel?  I don’t have the answer for that.  Paul says in one of his letters that those who haven’t heard still have the witness of nature.  Does that mean that God holds us responsible for what we know of Him?  Is there a time after death when people are given a chance to make the choice for salvation?  I think this is the most gray area in the Christian faith that I can think of.  I have far more questions than answers here. 

So, what do we do with all this “gray”?  We don’t run away from it.  Nor do we try to get rid of the gray and make those black and white lines that have become so much a part of Evangelicalism.  Rather, we need to embrace the uncertainty and limitedness of our knowledge and point instead to God, who knows everything, even if he’s not spelled it all out for us in detail.  Besides, would a God that you can understand be a God worthy of worship?

Embrace the gray.  Be willing to talk about these issues with other believers.  Give lots of grace to those who hold a different perspective.  Let’s get away from all the sniping and fussing and fear-mongering and instead focus on Jesus, who tells us to love one another.  Remember, Jesus said to lay down our burdens and take his burden because it is light.  I’m afraid that sometimes I get caught up in these peripheral issues (particularly origins) and forget the primary thing: Love.

Any thoughts?  Go out and Love some people tomorrow!

Is God Random?

I have heard an argument against biological evolution that says that God wouldn’t allow the universe to develop randomly or by “chance”. The argument was that God must have created the universe in six 24 hour days according to a literal reading of the first chapter of Genesis because He would not have allowed the Big Bang to occur and then allowed everything else to develop just by “chance”. I used to think that made sense, but I don’t anymore.

The Bible is clear that God has planned everything that will happen, even before He created the world. Proverbs 16:4 tells us “The Lord works out everything for his own ends.” In Ephesians, we read, “For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.”

The idea that God would not use evolution as a means of creation because it is “random” doesn’t hold water when we consider that God already knows everything that is going to happen. Even a sparrow doesn’t fall to the ground apart from the will of God (Matthew 10:29). What appear to us to be random events - genetic mutations, the roll of the dice, the clothes the kids put on the morning - are events that were known to God from the beginning of time. There is nothing that has happened from the first moment of Creation – whether it was 6,000 years ago or 15 billion years ago – that was not expected and known by God.

And this gives me great comfort. God isn’t surprised by my migraines. He doesn’t freak out when a Democrat is elected to the White House. As a speaker I once heard said, God isn’t on Prozac and pacing up and down in Heaven worrying about the mess down here. And that’s because He’s completely in control.

The words “random” and “chance” aren’t in God’s vocabulary. I am convinced by the scientific evidence that God used evolution as His tool in the creation of His universe. I’m also convinced that nothing that exists or happens is the product of chance. I can rest in the assurance that God loves me and is taking care of me. And I’m thanking God for that every day!!

Reflections on the Evolution Kerfuffle

I’ve always wanted to use the word “kerfuffle” in my blog. It’s such a great word. Don’t you love it? And there certainly was a kerfuffle around here on Saturday and Sunday. Here’s the relevant post. The short story is that I wrote a post describing my journey from Young-Earth Creationism to Evolutionary Creationism (or Theistic Evolutionism) that was noticed by a certain Young-Earth Creationist who then blogged about it. Unfortunately, he used my blog post as a “cautionary” tale to other Christians to stay committed to his interpretation of origins. Here are some random thoughts about the whole kerfuffle (see, I used the word again!).

1. I knew that people kept an eye out for others blogging about them since an author had previously commented to thank me about mentioning his book positively. However, I had not considered the reaction by people whom I criticized in my blog. I have no regrets about the criticism because it is warranted, but I did not expect to be called out on a popular YEC website.

2. I was pleased that the commenters were respectful, but I wasn’t happy to find that the tone of a few commenters bordered on arrogant. (If you are wondering if you were one of the borderline-arrogant ones, you probably weren’t.)

3. I strongly disagree with those who would suggest that my interpreting the first part of Genesis non-literally means that I am “compromising” my faith or that I don’t take seriously the authority of Scripture.

4. I very adamantly believe that my faith is secure and that my witness is stronger for honestly wrestling with the origins question. I did not “cave in” to secular belief because of science. I went back to the Bible and prayerfully considered what God wants us to learn from Genesis. I will stand by my conclusions until presented with evidence that convinces me otherwise.

I plan to post again on this topic sometime in the next month or so. My next post will be on the interpretation of Genesis. I hope it will be interesting and get others to read new sources and consider different ideas.

Evolution, Creation – Where’s the Truth?

Since high school, I have been on a spiritual and intellectual journey from Young-Earth Creationism to Evolutionary Creationism (AKA Theistic Evolutionism). I’m finally settling into and becoming comfortable with what I accept as true regarding origins, so I thought I’d share today how I got here. Eventually, I’d like to do more posts that are more in-depth on this topic.

I grew up in a Christian home and an Evangelical church. The existence of God and His interest in our lives was never questioned. At school, evolution was barely mentioned in my biology class (although I might have missed it during one of the many naps I took during those lectures). When I was in high school in the early 80s, the Young-Earth Creationism movement was really gaining steam. I recall some discussion in church settings about the evils of evolution, although my most vivid memory is an assembly during elementary school (in a Christian school) in which we were taught a song that said something like, “I’m no kin to a monkey”.

I started college without much idea of what I thought about evolution and creation, except that God created it all. I had a general idea that Young-Earth Creationism was “true” since that’s what was in the Bible, but I didn’t think hard about it. Since I was studying zoology, though, I had to come into contact with evolutionary theory. In science, the word “theory” denotes the overall explanation of a set of scientific facts or data. As with everything in science, a theory is always being tested, but evolutionary theory was considered as foundational and settled as gravitational theory. My professors, many of whom were Christians, talked as if evolution were settled. At the time, natural selection was still considered the prime mechanism of evolution, but some of my professors talked about the new research into genetics that included “jumping genes”, regulatory genes, and other exciting topics.

By the time I got to medical school, I was too busy to think much about origins. One thing I did notice then and that I have often noticed since then is that people who aren’t Christians often equate Christianity with uneducated because of the Young-Earth Creationism issue. In residency, I started to get interested in the topic again, partly because we were considering homeschooling. My dad, who had also found people uninterested in the Gospel because of the perceived link with Young-Earth Creationism, had come across the books of Hugh Ross, a Christian astronomer. Dad sent me several of the books and encouraged me to read them. Ross is an Old-Earth Creationist who believes that the first chapters of Genesis are not so much a portrayal of actual events 6000 years ago, but God’s revealing of the creation events to the writer of Genesis.

I really like Ross’ books, but I wanted to give Young-Earth Creationism an equal shot. I read one of Henry Morris’s books and wasn’t terribly impressed or convinced. I then took a look at Answers In Genesis and was rather appalled. Ken Ham essentially said that a person who does not believe in Young-Earth Creationism can’t be a Christian since they don’t believe the Bible. Not only was I distressed by comments like this, but I found the attitude of most of the AiG material to have an unacceptably negative attitude toward scientists. I took classes, including labs, taught by the same PhDs who were being portrayed as either duped or deceptive by the AiG writers and speakers.

By the time I started in medical practice, in 1997, I was pretty convinced of the truth of the Old-Earth Creationism perspective. But, I started thinking, “Is there anything in the Bible that refutes evolution?” Over the last several years, I have pondered that question as I have read commentaries, Bible studies, and a book on hermeneutics. I came to the conclusion that a reasonable interpretation of the Bible does not preclude accepting the fact of biological evolution. (I hope to blog in more detail about my studies at a later date.)

The idea that evolution is not anti-Biblical opened up a lot of doors for me. I had already accepted that the universe and Earth are both old. I had also been comfortable with the fact that life is old. The question that remained, though, is how did life begin and develop. The Bible is clear that God created everything in the very beginning. The development, though, is not spelled out in detail in Scripture. I have done more reading and become convinced that evolution is a much better explanation for life than any of the creation theories.

Twenty years ago, when I was in college, evolution was still discussed in terms of gradual changes over long periods of time facilitated by natural selection. Nowadays, biologists talk about evolution by natural selection as well as other genetic processes that allow for faster changes. Evolution has become more well-supported by research over time.

Some Christians are happy enough with evolution until we get to primates, at which time they become uncomfortable with the idea and claim that God must have stepped in to create humans specially from scratch. I think, though, that biological evolution explains the physical development of humans from primates very nicely, but it does not explain the part of us that is spiritual. At some point, God had to have given us the “breath of life” to make us “in His image”. Humans are obviously different than the rest of the animals in more than just our language skills. God created us to love Him and be in fellowship with Him forever. Exactly how and when He chose to differentiate us from the rest of the primates, I do not know.

Are you concerned that I’m losing my faith? That I’ve given in to a “worldly” theory that leaves out God? Don’t be. My faith in God is stronger than it was twenty years ago, and has not been diminished by my changing beliefs about the origins of the universe and life. I still believe that God loves me and that He sent Jesus to take away my sin. I believe that He speaks to me through Scripture and He answers prayer. But, I now believe that God chose to create the universe using processes that we can identify and study scientifically.

Later on, I’ll write in more detail about some of the issues related to evolution and creation with which I have wrestled. These include (but are not related to) “Does Genesis rule out the possibility of biological evolution?”, “Where does ID (Intelligent Design) fit into this discussion?”, “Does evolutionary belief lead to all kinds of social ills?”, “Why is this topic even important?”, “What should I teach my kids and how can I help them make good decisions?”. If you have questions that you’d like me to tackle, please leave them in the comments (but, understand that I’m not an expert, just someone trying to figure this stuff out on my own). In future posts, I’ll try to be more detailed and list resources that I have found helpful.

Do you ever question what you were taught about evolution or creation? Does this even show up on your “radar screen”? How do you handle this topic with your kids?