It is a long time since I have discussed here issues of creation and evolution. Indeed I think my post from two years ago Most British people still believe in God the Creator, but why? is the most recent to touch on this matter, and even there I don’t really discuss my own position.
However, in recent weeks I have become involved in some Facebook discussions on this matter, and have made some comments which are really too long for such threads. Here is the latest of those. The discussion had been about whether animals could have died before the fall of Adam and Eve. I was recommended an article by David Shackelford, published by Creation Ministries International, with the provocative title The relationship between the Fall, the Curse, and the Gospel, and its incompatibility with theistic evolution. In response I wrote (slightly edited):
Interesting article.
Therefore, the ontological foundations of the pre-fallen world require that there be nothing below that standard. Such an environment requires the absence of violence, death, or bloodshed.
This is a non sequitur, at least if talking about animals. It needs to be argued, not assumed, that violence and death among animals falls below God’s standard of perfection. I take the point about initial vegetarianism in Genesis 1:29-30, but this cannot imply that animal death is objectively evil because then the revocation of vegetarianism in 9:3 is God commanding sin. An argument can perhaps be built from 9:4-6, but it needs to be built, not assumed.
If any one of these three elements in Genesis is reduced to something other than a historical event, the whole of Scripture is called into question and the Gospel of Christ begins to crumble. It is likewise axiomatic that if theistic evolution is true, then not just one, but all three of the aforementioned criteria are false and must be jettisoned.
Another complete non sequitur. Theistic evolution does not imply that Garden of Eden story is untrue or “unhistorical”. I do not deny that there was a first couple set apart in a “garden”, who really lived and really died. The only issue is exactly how they were created and came to be in the garden.
While some theistic evolutionists would say that Adam and Eve were real people but not directly created by God, they still face insurmountable problems with the plain teachings of Scripture; for example, the inherent sinful nature, the continual upward progress demanded by most versions of evolution, and so forth.
Please tell me what problem I am supposed to have with “the inherent sinful nature”. I would love to know! I don’t hold to Augustine’s view of it, see my post Augustine’s mistake about original sin. But I really don’t know what version is supposed to cause me “insurmountable problems”. As for “continual upward progress”, this is not real evolutionary science but the half-baked philosophy that some atheists have tried to bolt on to it.
Most evolutionary theories (particularly theistic evolution) assume an upward spiral of progress, including the development of man.
That is complete nonsense, concerning theistic evolution. OK, some pseudo-Christians who actually believe that in the continuing progress of mankind may hold to some kind of theistic evolution. But evangelical theistic evolutionists are clear that progress is possible only as God makes it possible, and that it stopped, at least in spiritual and moral areas, when mankind turned away from God into sin.
I will leave to scientists the task of demonstrating the scientific weaknesses of evolution.
I will leave it to Dr Shackelford to demonstrate the theological weaknesses of his position – or at least the logical weakness of this sentence.
At one point it is thought there were 15 species of humans on this planet – we are the last. Of which of these did two apparently enter a garden? You are dealing in myth not science, and there is no such thing as theistic evolution – evolution is random, local in terms of an immediate environment and specific to that, and is therefore a chaotic system. Theistic evolution means some pre-intelligence touches the rudder of the evolutionary boat: whereas evolution itself contains no purposeful or ethical content.
Pluralist, you ask a good question. But I can’t answer it. The Bible doesn’t tell give us an answer, beyond suggesting a location for the garden (Middle East rather than Africa apparently). Science might be able to tell us for example that there was a first couple in the the genus Homo and/or in the species Homo sapiens, and that might give us an idea. And I suppose we might get clues from the culture of Homo erectus, Neanderthal man etc. But I don’t think anyone can give a definitive answer, or will be able to, in this world.
I’m sorry, but there is such a thing as theistic evolution. You might wonder whether it ought to be called that, whether it is truly evolution or truly theistic. I would argue that it is. Yes, some people have put forward ideas whereby “some pre-intelligence touches the rudder of the evolutionary boat”. But true theistic evolution as I understand it is based in the concept of divine providence, whereby every event, even genuinely random and chaotic ones, are under God’s sovereignty and work together for his purposes.
For more related to this, I suggest you read my series (sadly incomplete) Kingdom Thermodynamics, concerning random events and causality.
Peter
Thank you for a thought provoking entry on this topic. It is an area I reflect on periodically. My own leanings have varied since in 2002 when as a trainee Reader I wrote an essay coming out as leaning to Progressive Creationism. Since then I have vantured into the young earth creationist view but most commonlyreside within what you and I would recognise as the theistic evolution spectrum.
Clearly Pluralist (I think I have seen you contribute to threads on the Fulcrum site?)has defined his terms in a very specific way – such as to exclude all but what I guess may be his own perceptions. That is his privilege. Evolution as a concept may be neutral, but that does not mean that how we understand, interpret and use it, and what we do with it, is devoid of value judgements. Christian fundementalists are I feel reading things which are not there when they suggest that the concept is essentially atheisitic, rather than recognising the baggagee and packaging atheisits may add to it.
I have examined a lot of material in recent years .
John Stott suggests in my old edition of Understanbding the Bible that homo erectus moved into homo sapiens before God breathed his spirit into him and he became homo divinus. Creation and Evolution by Denis Alexander and Who made God byEdgar Andrews are worth a look.
My vicar used part of last year’s sabbatical to produce a paper on origins and the fall., suggesting that humanity as we know it seemed to become apparent c 10000 years ago. Which is not wholly out of line with the narrower chronology you might estimate by looking at Biblical geaneologies. So while I have some questions, I do not consider that TE is inconsistent with the highest views of Scripture or the revelation it contains.
I look forward to further contributions.
Colin, thank you for your interesting comments.
I would have some serious questions about any conclusion that humans only became “Homo divinus” as recently as 10,000 years ago. The problem is that this is long after the division of humanity into its current racial groups. I can see in this conclusion the germ of an argument that only white people, “Caucasians”, are truly human – or at least that only they have attained “knowledge of good and evil” and have fallen. I guess one might argue that some “fully human gene” had managed to spread to all Africans and Asians by early modern times. But it probably could not have reached native Americans and Australian aborigines before they were discovered by Europeans. So were those discoverers right to treat the natives as only half human?
Peter
thanks for throwing that thought in. I must find out if my vicar had any views on such potential implications. The tidier dimensions to my mind like to be able to form a coherent and reasonably complete sequence of events. Some aspects of TE leave me feeling there are gaps in the total scheme – and you have set a possible one out here.
For example Answers in Genesis generally seems to me to offer a reasonably full story of events. But I find that some of what it suggests as appearing to try to make make reality fit a pre conceived theology rather objectively loking at the evidence for that reality. If that makes sense.
Colin, I discovered that I had touched on these issues in an old post The oldest known sin, which puts the Fall back to at least 43,000 years ago. See also the link to the Wikipedia article on behavioural modernity, which might tie up with the emergence, or creation, of Homo divinus.