We have no audio for this one, as our server lost the file :(
However, here's the text of the message, delivered in October 2006 by Pastor Tim MacBride. It looks at three views Christians hold about creation and evolution, and how it might fit in with our view of the Bible as the inspired word of God.
Creation
Tonight’s topic is a very important one. It was by far the most frequently asked question among the responses I received for this Hard Questions series. And it’s so important – and complex – that we’re going to be spending significantly more time on it tonight, in a two-part message.
The question is: how should we as Christians respond to the theory of evolution which is the opinion of the majority of non-Christian scientists, and is taught as fact in our schools & universities? It has implications for not just what we believe, but for those we are trying to reach with the gospel. For many, this alleged conflict between the Bible & Science is a major stumbling block in coming to faith.
There’s also a battle going on between members of the scientific community – those who favour evolution, vs ‘creation scientists’ who use scientific argument to try to prove the Biblical account. How can we get involved in this debate? And should we?
And yet – as I hope to show a little later – I don’t think science is the real battleground. Which is why tonight you’re not going to hear a lot of science on either side of the debate. I’ll give you some ref’s to chase up later, but that won’t be my focus. Which is a good thing, because I’m not a scientist; I did HS physics & chemistry, which means I’m qualified to use a Bunsen burner & make inaccurate measurements of the acceleration due to gravity, but that’s pretty much it.
But I think the real issue lies in how we interpret the Bible. Because Christians – people who genuinely profess to be Bible-believing Christians – disagree in this area. So what I’m going to do tonight is in two parts:
Firstly, I’m going to outline the three main views that Christians hold on how the world came into being. And when I say ‘outline’, I mean it. There’s no time tonight for an in-depth defence of these three positions, or a presentation of the scientific evidence for & against. It’s simply going to be a case of: this is what they believe, and here are a few implications of their position. If you want to find out more, I’d recommend a book we’ve got on our bookstall, called Three views on creation & evolution.
Secondly, after we’ve had a bit of a break, I’m going to come back & explain why I personally don’t hold to any of them.
A. Christian views on Creation
Now there are more than 3 views, and variations of each of the 3, but tonight I’m going to outline the 3 most popular. They are: (1) young earth creationism, which believes that God created the world in six literal, 24-hour days, and that the world is less than 10,000 years old; (2) old earth creationism, sometimes called ‘progressive’ creationism, which accepts a much longer time-frame, but retains the order of events from Genesis ch 1; and (3) theistic evolution, which believes that God was the original cause & designer of an evolutionary process.
1. Young earth creationism
Let’s look first at young earth creationism. This is the view that gets the most press, as it’s the one favoured by American fundamentalists & is the one most directly in conflict with the theory of evolution.
This view starts with the assumption that Gen 1 is a literal account of how God created the world. It then looks for scientific evidence which supports this. Where science conflicts with the Biblical account, it’s a matter of faith that the science must be wrong. And this makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, scientists are fallible humans with a limited capacity to understand, whereas the Bible was inspired by the infallible God with perfect understanding. And so we keep working at our science in the hope that it will eventually conform to God’s truth as revealed in the Bible.
Now to hold this view – which by its own admission puts the Bible above science – there are some difficult issues to explain (as there are with the other two). This requires some creative thinking to explain the apparent contradictions between science & the Bible. Just to give a few examples:
· Order: Plants are designed by God to survive with sunlight & the gravitational & atmospheric conditions created by the presence of the sun & moon – yet they are created on day 3, one day before the sun & moon. In answer to this, various explanations have been offered as to how plants survived that first day.
· Calculating from the speed of light, the light that we see from distant stars must have left those stars millions of years ago. In answer to this suggestions have been made that the laws of physics are different now than during creation; or that God created the universe to appear older, by creating the light energy already in transit from those distant stars.
· The fossil record suggests an old earth. In answer to this, there have been various theories of how a world-wide flood might have caused fossils to be created more quickly; this formed various geological strata through a single catastrophic flood rather than over a long period of time. One rather interesting piece of evidence is the fossil of a single tree that ran through several geological strata!
Now I’m not making any judgements either way about whether these are valid explanations. I’m just using them as examples of how young earth creationists operate. Gen 1 is taken as a literal description of how God created the earth, and science is employed to fill in the details.
As with the second view we’ll look at in a minute, young earth creationism believes in a literal Adam & Eve, a literal serpent, a literal fruit-tree, and a literal, global flood.
If you want to know more about this view, and the scientific evidence being produced, the best place to start is the website for an organisation called Answers in Genesis. (Books, magazines, seminars.)
2. Old earth (‘progressive’) creationism
The second view is called old earth or ‘progressive’ creationism. The universe was still created in the same order as Gen 1, but the days are not literal. Each day represents a different era, maybe millions of years. This view, then, is less in conflict with secular science, as it allows for an old earth. It still doesn’t hold to any kind of evolution of species – maintaining that God specially intervened to create each individual species of plant & animal.
Crucial to this view is the interpretation of the Hebrew word for day, yom. Yom can mean a literal 24-hour period; or it can mean an indefinite period of time – like we would say ‘back in my day’. That’s why this view is sometimes called the Age-Day view.
Now to hold this view, you need to be able to explain the phrase ‘And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day’. That sounds like 24 hours to me. Yet it is possible to translate the phrase – ‘and the day/age ended, and a new day/age began.’ Whereas young earth creationists can sometimes be guilty of forcing science to fit the Bible, in this case old earth creationists might be equally guilty of forcing the Bible to fit the science.
[However, they are on stronger ground when we look at Gen 2 & see the list of things Adam did on day 6: God made Adam; God then plants a garden with all kinds of trees growing in it; Adam, after receiving instructions from God, has all the animals brought to him where he names them all – specifically the birds & mammals – but finds no suitable helper for him; Adam falls into a deep sleep, loses a rib, and then has the woman presented to him when he wakes up; upon seeing her he says literally ‘now, at long last, bone of my bones’. A pretty full-on day by any standard.]
Another crucial issue to this view – and the next – is that it requires plant & animal death before Adam & Eve sinned at some point during the 6th day. How could a loving God have created things to die? How could he look at a creation that contains death and say ‘it was good’? However, old earth creationists argue firstly that life on earth was always intended to be a temporary, finite existence that pointed toward the ultimate perfection of God in his timeless, infinite existence. Secondly, given the decay of cells in plants & the life-spans of micro-organisms & some insects, even one literal, 24-hour day is enough for some death to occur. Some young earth creationists then reply that Adam & Eve’s sin only brought in death for animals that have souls – and so the argument continues back & forth.
So again, to sum up this view: the ‘days’ in Gen 1 are eras – long periods of time, maybe millions of years. After all, the Bible says ‘with the Lord a day is like a thousand years’. But in each era of creation, God intervened to form each species.
If you want to find out more about this view, there’s a book by Christian astronomer Hugh Ross called A Matter of Days, which is the best presentation of this view I’ve seen.
3. Theistic evolution (‘fully gifted creationism’)
The third view we’re going to look at is usually called ‘theistic evolution’ – which simply means evolution with God in the picture. One of the leading Christian academics who holds this view prefers the term ‘fully gifted creationism’. That is, God fully gifted his creation from the outset with ability to evolve itself into what we see today.
It’s a little bit like some of those sci-fi films about artificial intelligence – where the programmers create computers or robots with the ability to learn, adapt & replicate themselves into more advanced forms without further human intervention.
Theistic evolution argues that God was the original cause of the ‘big bang’. And he so designed this big bang with all the necessary components – including the laws of chance & chaos theory – so that our universe would ‘create itself’. I suppose you could argue that it takes even greater intelligence & skill to do that, than to make everything one-by-one.
As well as having to address the same concerns as the old earth creationists – such as plant & animal death, and struggle – there are some other issues here too. Most notably, was there a pair of first humans, and how were they made? At what point did primates & proto-humans become God’s image bearers? Most theistic evolutionists – like John Stott – would argue that along the lines of Gen 2:7 that God ‘breathed’ his spirit into the first humans at a certain point in the evolutionary process – thus setting homo sapiens apart from the rest of creation.
The other more critical issue is how to harmonise this with what the Bible says in Genesis. After all, this view requires far more than a re-interpretation of the word ‘day’. In fact, it requires the Bible to be read in a non-literal way. What are we – who desire to be Bible-believing Christians – to do with this? Is this just a case of ignoring the bits of the Bible to suit our own agenda – or are there good reasons for reading the first 3 chapters of Genesis in a different way?
That’s what the next part will be all about, so stay tuned.
B. Issues of Biblical Interpretation
So we’ve heard the 3 main positions that Christians hold on creation: at the one end, an extremely literal reading of creation in six days; at the other end God as the ultimate source & designer of the evolutionary process; and in the middle the age-day reading. The question that this raises is: which one should we believe? If we are to be faithful to the Bible, do we have to believe in a young earth created in six literal days?
This question cuts to the heart of a much wider debate, about the inerrancy of Scripture. If the world wasn’t created in 6 literal days, then surely that would make the Bible wrong! Wouldn’t it?
1. Inerrancy
But we have to define what we mean by inerrant – or ‘without error’. Does it mean that every word & every sentence in the Bible must be understood & interpreted as a factual statement? [] I’d argue ‘certainly not’, and point to the vast array of poetic images that are most clearly not factual statements. For example, let’s look at Ps 19:
19:4b ‘In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun’
Now I’m sure if you asked any astronomer, they’d answer with a relatively high degree of confidence that the sun does not exist in a tent; and space is not made of canvas, animal skin, or any other substance that ancient Hebrews were likely to have made tents from. This statement – as I’m sure you’d all agree – is a poetic metaphor, and I think a pretty good one. It’s in the Bible, but clearly it’s not meant to be interpreted as a factual statement.
As well as similes & metaphors, other statements reflect the scientific understanding of the day:
19:6 ‘[The sun] rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other’
While this was a legitimate observation from the perspective of the earth’s surface 3 millennia ago, some guy named Copernicus suggested that this might not really be the case, and since then NASA has proven it beyond doubt. So if this statement appeared in an astronomy textbook it would be incorrect, although it was a legitimate observation at the time it was written. It’s what’s known as phenomenological language – language used to express how things appear to us from our finite perspective & limited understanding, not necessarily how they really are.
Let’s jump back to Gen 1 for a minute: could you imagine how the original hearers would have reacted if God had given them the 21st century explanation: ‘OK, so in the beginning I got a proton and surrounded it with an electron – you won’t discover them for a few millennia, but just go with me on this one…’ And maybe he’d have to explain it differently 1000 years in our future, when we find out that a lot of what we think we know now is only partly true after all!
At any rate, here in just one Psalm – Psalm 19 – we have two statements which can’t be understood as factual. One is a poetic image, and another is couched in the scientific understanding of its time. And they’re in the Bible. []
Do you have a problem with this? I guess not, because our common sense helps us instinctively understand three things:
(1) They are poetry; and poetry as a genre, or style of writing has its own rules of interpretation.
(2) It was written within a culture which didn’t understand as much about science as we do, so it explains things in a way that would have been understood at the time.
(3) The statements aren’t errors – in context, they aren’t communicating an untruth. The point of the whole Psalm is that God created the world the way it is; and by observing the world we see the evidence of an intelligent designer.
So if this is the case for Psalm 19 – that it contains statements that aren’t meant to be understood as factual – could this be the case for Genesis ch 1?
2. Genre
The whole issue turns on this question: what is the genre of the first few chapters of Gen? Because the genre of a piece of writing determines how we understand it.
Now with some genres, they are meant to be understood & interpreted factually. For example, the gospels are understood as the historical documents they claim to be – the writers employ all the cues that they are writing history, not a made-up novel. Similarly the epistles are understood as letters – as non-fictional communications.
However, some genres are not intended to be read in a literal sense. For example, as well as poetry the Bible contains a genre called ‘apocalyptic’. Some parts of Daniel & the book of Revelation are written in this genre, and so we don’t take every statement literally. The rules of apocalyptic require symbolic images – like multi-headed beasts rising from the sea – to be interpreted. We might disagree about how they are interpreted, but we know not to be on the lookout for a literal monster being ridden by a drunk prostitute. Yet it doesn’t mean the Bible is wrong.
Similarly, the Bible contains parables – made up stories; stories that are not factually true. There was no literal ‘good Samaritan’. There was no literal ‘prodigal son’. Jesus made those stories up – and his audience knew he was making them up. And he made them up in order to communicate truth in the most appropriate way to that audience. Again, this doesn’t mean the Bible is wrong.
So again I ask, is it possible that Genesis 1 is of a genre that doesn’t require it to be understood in a factual way? Is it a bit like Psalm 19, or one of Jesus’ parables – communicating a truth about God & the world, without intending for each element to be interpreted in a literal, factual sense?
Let me explain a bit about why I think this is the case.
Firstly, this isn’t the only creation account from the ancient world. Every society had one, and Genesis 1 conforms to the pattern & style of those of the nations around. And it’s interesting to note the purpose of all of these different creation accounts. They weren’t interested in a scientific explanation of how everything came about; they were primarily concerned with the origin of their gods, and the relationship of their gods to humanity. The question being answered wasn’t really how did the earth come about, or when did it come about – but why and by whom.
So it shouldn’t come as a great surprise when we see that Genesis 1 addresses these concerns directly. And although Genesis uses a similar style & literary form to these other creation accounts, it gives remarkably different answers.
A typical example of an ancient creation story is called Enuma Elish, which belonged to the Babylonian people. It’s quite close to Israel geographically & culturally. It’s arranged in 2 x 3 stone tablets, similar to the 3 x 2 arrangement of the 6 days in Gen 1. And there are many common elements. Here are the edited highlights:
In the beginning, there was Tiamat (the female god of saltwater) & Apsu (the male god of freshwater). They get busy & have lots of kids, who start fighting with their parents & each other. To cut a long & rather violent story short, Marduk, the main god of Babylon, kills Tiamat, the goddess of saltwater, with a sword – cutting her in two. The top half becomes the waters above (or the sky) and the bottom half becomes the waters below (the sea). Humans are then created as an afterthought to serve the gods & make their lives easier.
In contrast to this, Genesis 1 is a defiant slap in the face for the Babylonian worldview, and all the cultures around who believed in multiple gods who created the world by fighting each other. It simply says: in the beginning God created the world. The only God. And he did it not out of the cut up bits of a dead God, but out of nothing.
Further, this process of creation wasn’t a fight between a bunch of squabbling gods – it was an intentional process. The first 3 days of creation are depicted as God setting the boundaries of his creation: separating light & dark, waters above & waters below, sea & land, in total control over the forces of chaos. And the next 3 are spent filling what he has bounded: the heavens; the sea & sky; the dry land. God did it. And he planned it.
And finally, as the pinnacle of his creation, rather than an afterthought; as the ruler over it, rather than a domestic servant, he creates humanity to bear his image.
The nations around Israel were also into astrology – worship of the sun, moon & stars as divine forces. Genesis, however, depicts these great heavenly bodies as just part of God’s creation. They even came after the light to show that God is the source of light & life, not them. Rather dismissively, Genesis doesn’t even name the sun & moon, and says – oh, and he also created the stars… A big slap in the face to astrology, don’t you think!
To sum up: Genesis is similar in form with the other creation stories from the nations around; it addresses the same questions; yet the answers it gives are radically different – unashamedly monotheistic. This is what leads me to understand Genesis 1 as belonging to the genre of storied theology. A story that makes a theological point. It’s about who & why, not how & when.
3. The ‘Literary Pictorial’ view
Now this can be a little disappointing, if we’re looking for a scientific answer as to the how & when. Because if this view is right, the Bible doesn’t give us an answer. All Scripture is indeed inspired by God – and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that we may be equipped for every good work. But it isn’t inspired by God simply to satisfy our intellectual curiosity.
Which is why I don’t hold to any of those 3 views I listed earlier. I don’t have one. I’m what you’d call a ‘creation agnostic’ when it comes to how God created the world. All I know is that he did it, and he created us with a special role to look after it, to rule over it, and to bear his image throughout it.
This view, by the way, is usually called the ‘literary pictorial’ view of Genesis 1. ‘Days’ are a literary device used to frame the story – which also aids the memory as it would have first been passed down orally through generations, before being written down.
In the first 3 days, God is depicted as separating or ordering his creation – laying out its boundaries: light & dark, water & atmosphere, water & dry land. In the next 3 days he then fills what he has ordered: he fills the day & night sky with sources of light; he fills the water & air with fish & birds; he fills the dry land with animals.
This view is often associated with theistic evolution, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, Ange views Gen 1 in the same way, but leans toward the age-day or ‘old earth’ view. And I personally don’t have a preference. It could have been in 6 days, 6 billion years or 6 nanoseconds. This reading of Genesis doesn’t demand a particular time-frame.
[Promoted by mainstream colleges in Syd, inc. Morling, Moore; Syd Anglican magazine The Briefing promotes this view in the latest issue, Oct 2006…]
And if you’d indulge me for a minute, I’d like to tell you about my personal journey with this issue; and why my views changed from when I was a teenager. You see, young earth creationists will often see Christians who have other views as selling out to science, or to evolutionary theory. But at least for me, that’s not the case.
It wasn’t science that caused me to change my mind. I grew up in a church where it was assumed you’d believe in a literal, 6 day creation. Our family subscribed to a creation science magazine & I read a lot of the science being done to refute evolution & support a young earth. Some of it’s a bit dubious, but a lot of it’s quite thought provoking. Even now, although I think the evidence for an old earth is pretty compelling, I think evolution has a lot of holes which science can’t explain. But science wasn’t a part of the equation – after all, there are scientists on both sides of the fence, who can tell who is right?
A few yrs before college: did a lot of reading on interpreting the Bible. It’s a big factor in my ending up as a pastor. And during that time, I was confronted by this question of genre. The way I’d read Genesis all my life – was that the way it had to be read? The arguments I’ve just outlined – & others – convinced me otherwise. The Bible, not the claims of fallible scientists that could be overturned tomorrow.
4. Implications for evangelism
Why am I telling you what I think? Why not just tell you the 3 views & go home? (Probably would have saved me some grief…) But there are two reasons I wanted to explain it all to you as fully as I have.
Firstly, there are many Xns who don’t believe in a literal, 6-day creation, yet still claim to be Bible-believing Christians. People like me, for example. Sadly, a lot of the rhetoric coming from young earth creationists condemns us as selling out to secular science and picking & choosing which bits of the Bible we want to believe.
I hope that whether you agree with me on this issue or not, you’ll see that this is not the case. We don’t have to see other Christians as ‘the enemy’ because we disagree on this topic. The fact that God created the world is essential for salvation, otherwise we would have no reason to be saved; but how God did it may be important, yet it’s not essential.
In fact, this is starting to happen with the Intelligent Design movement – which isn’t really linked to any one of these 3 views. Fundamentally, it says that no matter what your view on Genesis, science & philosophy both point to the existence of an intelligent designer. Whether it be a designer who created the world in 6 days, or a designer who intervenes in an evolutionary process. It would be great if Christians from all viewpoints could present a united front to the rest of the world in arguing what is, essentially, the main point of Genesis 1 – that there is one God behind the universe & human existence.
OT Scholar Gordon Wenham writes: ‘The Bible-versus-science debate has, most regrettably, sidetracked readers of Genesis 1. Instead of reading the chapter as a triumphant affirmation of the power and wisdom of God and the wonder of his creation, we have been too often bogged down in attempting to squeeze Scripture into the mold of the latest scientific hypothesis or distorting scientific facts to fit a particular interpretation. When allowed to speak for itself, Genesis 1 looks beyond such minutiae. Its proclamation of the God of grace and power who undergirds the world and gives it purpose justifies the scientific approach to nature. Genesis 1, by further affirming the unique status of man, his place in the divine program, and God’s care for him, gives a hope to mankind that atheistic philosophies can never legitimately supply.’
Secondly, and more importantly, there are implications for our evangelism. Some of you who emailed this question said that the debate between creation & evolution forms a major stumbling block to faith. This is true for many people. So how should we deal with it?
Now if we believe that the only way to understand Genesis 1 is the young earth, literal 6-day view, we have two options. Either we convince non-believers on other grounds that the Bible is true, and tell them that they have to take the Bible’s view of creation on faith; OR, we have to provide compelling, scientific evidence that the literal reading of Genesis is true. And to their great credit, this is what organisations such as Answers in Genesis are seeking to do. Their focus is on winning people to Christ through their science, with considerable success.
Yet there are dangers in this approach, as science is always changing. For example, I’ve read testimonies of people who came to faith on the basis of a theory that was doing the rounds about 15 years ago: that the speed of light was slowing down, which is why the universe appears older than it is. The trouble is, more recently that’s been called into serious question, with evidence that the only change has been in our improved ability to measure the speed of light! What becomes of those conversions?
While we shouldn’t give up scientific investigation, in our evangelism I believe we should focus on what the Bible says is the fundamental basis for belief. The historical fact of Jesus’ death & resurrection. That proved Jesus was who he claimed to be – the son of God. And that evidence has remained largely unchanged for 2000 years.
So I suppose the advantage of my position in an evangelistic sense is that it sidesteps the science issue altogether. I don’t claim that the Bible tells us anything about how or when the world was created. Just that God did it. Which means we owe him our existence & obedience. And that despite our rebellion against him, he sent Jesus to die for us, to forgive us, to re-create us in his image.
Debunk the myth that fundamentalists have created & the media perpetuates: that the debate is simply a two-sided one between young earth creation & atheism.
And whatever your view of creation & Genesis 1, remind those whom you’re seeking to reach with the gospel that the ultimate proof lies in the resurrection.
Acts 17:31 ‘For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.’