Creation Evolutionism: The Science of Scripture
By Kevin A. Lehmann on in Christian Theology, Kevin's Commentary
Who is right, the creationists or the evolutionists? In this man’s humble opinion, they both are. Evolution and Creationism actually go hand in hand. The origins of this dilemma really trace back to the implications of Lyell’s geology and Darby’s theology. That in turn gave rise to the age old debate between the young earth/global flood advocates and the old earth/local flood believers.
Here is just a brief summary of evolution creationism: Evolutionary creation embraces the time-honored belief that divine revelation flows from two major sources––the Book of God’s Words and the Book of God’s Works. This position supports a complementary relationship between Scripture and science in understanding origins.
The Latin complere, from which derives the word “complementary,” means “to finish” and “to fulfill.” The verb “to complement” refers to the act of adding something that is lacking in order to make complete. Therefore, together the Two Divine Books fulfill each other; alone they are incomplete.
Science reveals how the Creator made this spectacular design-reflecting world, while the Bible declares precisely who created it—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The most compelling argument for evolutionary creation is that it accepts without any reservations both biblical faith and modern science. This position frees us from the chains of the “origins dichotomy” and the “science-religion warfare” myth, both of which have imprisoned many minds throughout most of the twentieth century.
Evolutionary creation meets the yearning of a scientific generation in search of spiritual meaning. More specifically, it offers an intellectually satisfying worldview for those who experience Christ in a personal relationship and know His creation through science. Though this position recognizes that science and religion operate within their respective domains, it does not suffer from the intellectual schizophrenia of placing them in individual compartments. Instead, evolutionary creation features an integrated worldview and connotes a respectful and fruitful dialogue between the best science today and the foundations of historic Christianity.
Evolutionary creationists also enjoy freedom from scientific concordism/supremacy. Instead of tearing the words of Scripture out of their lexical and historical contexts in order to harmonize them with modern science, Evolutionary Creationists are neither embarrassed nor apologetic for the obvious ancient science in the Bible. For example, there is no need to twist and manipulate the Hebrew word raqia‘ (traditionally and best translated as “firmament”), and then claim that it refers to the atmosphere or outer space. Scripture clearly states that God created a “hard dome” overhead, and evolutionary creationists recognize that this is an accommodation to ancient peoples by the Holy Spirit, in order to reveal the Message of Faith that He is the Creator of the heavens. While Moses is widely credited as the author of the Pentateuch, he should correctly be noted as the editor-in-chief, as some of the writings of the first five books were already in existence prior to his penmanship.
In light of the ancient science in God’s Word, it is evident that the Bible is not a book of modern scientific facts revealed before their discovery, but a book of inerrant, life-changing, spiritual truths. The day/age theory, the Gap theory, and the literal 24 hr/ 7-day creation of the heavens and the earth don’t fit into the context of this particular article, but suffice it to say that Genesis is the beginning of God revealing himself and his covenantal relationship to man six thousand years ago, not the beginning of the actual origins of the universe.
Christian evolutionists are free as well from the God-of-the-gaps. This idea of divine creative action sees the Creator as little more than a tinkering meddler who intervened sporadically into the world to add creatures and/or missing parts. From this perspective, God made the original creation incomplete. But instead of looking for “gaps” where He purportedly entered to create, evolutionary creationists assert that His divine power is apparent in the robust self-assembling character of the evolutionary continuum of life, from the first molecules to human beings. However, it is not an endorsement of Darwin’s macroevolutionary theory in which he hypothesized that man evolved from apes, assuming transitional fossils would have been discovered, which they never were. And instead of fearing the Creator’s retreat from the world because of the loss of supposed “gaps” in nature, evolutionary creationists welcome scientific discoveries that fill gaps in our knowledge and claim these as declarations of the Lord’s glory.
In particular, advances in the sciences dealing with evolution proclaim the faithfulness of God’s natural processes in an evolving creation.
Evolutionary creation is the only Christian view of origins that offers a unified vision of science. It does not postulate that those practicing certain scientific disciplines are intellectually incompetent or spiritually deceived, as so many like to falsely frame the debate. There is no discrimination between sciences dealing with the daily operation of the world and those investigating its past origins. And evolutionary creation does not segregate evolutionary biology from cosmology, geology, and paleontology; it emcompasses it.
For example, young earth creation has a disjointed understanding of science. On the one hand, it rejects the evolutionary sciences. Yet on the other hand, these anti-evolutionists support and even practice modern engineering and medical sciences, accepting research built on the assumption that natural processes feature robust regularity.
Similarly, progressive creation has a double standard in its science. It affirms the evolution of the inanimate universe as offered by cosmological and geological sciences, but dismisses the unifying principle of biological science that life evolved.
However, these are false dichotomies that originate ultimately from the assumption that Scripture features scientific concordism and a God-of-the-gaps understanding of divine creative action.
In contrast, evolutionary creationists uphold the unity and coherence of all the natural sciences, because scientific discovery is ultimately rooted in God the creator. They believe that the Creator has made a world that faithfully follows His ordained and sustained natural laws and processes, and they embrace the belief that He has gifted us with marvellous minds and the ability to investigate the physical world.
Through science, we can think God’s thoughts after Him and discover His method of creating the universe and life. In fact, Christian evolutionists believe that every scientific discipline is a gift from the Lord, including the evolutionary sciences.
Evolutionary creation offers a balanced complementary relationship between modern science and Christian faith. This position notes that the church’s struggle in the early seventeenth century with Galileo’s astronomy offers a valuable insight into understanding the evolutionary sciences and the biblical accounts of origins.
This historic episode led many believers to realize that the Bible is not a book of science, but a book of salvation. Christians who accept evolution as God’s method of creation are especially inspired by the famed aphorism that Galileo popularized: “The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven and not how heaven goes.”
For contrasting viewpoints, check out “Answers in Genesis” (Ken Ham – young earth/ global flood advocate) and “Reasons to Believe” (Dr. Hugh Ross – old earth/local flood advocate).
Until next time . . . Wake Up America!
Kevin A. Lehmann
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7 Comment(s)
By Brian Eargle on Apr 9, 2012 | Reply
Sorry, Kevin, but no. A belief in billions of years for a universe to expand to its present expanse from a non-space “where” nothing created out of nothing everything that exists? Puh-leeaase.
Or a recurring expanding-collapsing universe, within which there is no explanation why matter at intergalactic distances expanding at supposed significant fractions of c would ever stop expanding, thus contradicting Newton’s First Law of Motion (concerning inertia), in response to an astronomically remote and infinitesimal gravitational force? NOT.
Or an uncreated, infinitely regressing universe, contracting at the speed of the tortoise of Zeno’s Paradox as one regresses back into the infinite mists of an eternity that transcends matter and space and time? Except for that pesky thing called entropy, which is a FINITE capacity of extractable energy available to do work. Entropy would have tended to zero at a specific point in time past = the time it would take for the FINITE measure of entropy in the universe to dissipate to stasis at 2.725°K, subtracted from the infinity of eternity past, which time is . . . the infinity of eternity past ago. But manifestly, entropy of the universe is NOT zero; ergo, the universe has existed for only a finite period of time since a precise first day of the history of the universe, which the Genesis account and the genealogical record establish at about 6150 years ago.
The alternative to failed cosmologies and mythologies about origins is to take literally, at face value, the word of the only Person who was there at the time, that is, God, Who in the beginning created the heavens and the earth. He says that it took six “yom” or “evenings and mornings” – a period of time equivalent to a solar day, even though our Sol was not created until Day 4.
Christians who have thought out such things as Origins and Last Things, eternity and entropy, infinity and the trustworthiness of Scripture, generally come to respect God’s word about the Eternal and Transcendent One creating, from beyond time and space, a temporal universe bounded by time and space and forces like gravity and electromagnetism, logic and human love.
You allow your desire for unity among Christians and reconciliation of the ignorant and the unbelieving with the Creator, Who is the Truth, to paper over fundamental contradictions between faith in God and trust in that which can be seen, measured, and used or consumed. Although your writing is diplomatic, persuasive, conciliatory, peace-making, and just nice, your pleasant words do not in any way join together in one accord so-called scientists, whose knowledge is limited to man’s collected observations, with believers, who know the omniscient and omnipotent God and His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is to us not only the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but He is also unto us the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, the Lord our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
By Kevin A. Lehmann on Apr 9, 2012 | Reply
@Brian: Spoken like a religious, dogmatic Christian. I presume you’re a Calvinist that believes in a “literal” hellfire as well? And what do you constitute a “Christian?”
By Nathan M. Bickel on Apr 26, 2012 | Reply
Brian Eargle: Re: Your Apr 9, 2012 comment:
Brian – Spot on with your excellent comment!
I grow weary of both non Christians and Christians, alike who attempt to reconcile the pseudo science teaching of evolution with the divine revelation of the historical Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Such compromise is not possible. They are only fooling themselves when they think that they can embrace both pseudo science evolution and the Christ of the Scriptures:
“Evolution:” Rejected by Jesus Christ
http://www.thechristianmessage.org/2011/02/evolution-rejected-by-jesus-christ.html
“Trusting a Theory or Trusting the God of Human History:”
http://www.thechristianmessage.org/2012/02/trusting-theory-or-trusting-god-of.html
Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel
http://www.thechristianmessage.org
By Bilovisso Sanspoul on Apr 27, 2012 | Reply
There is an objective alliance between the advocates of a “young earth” and those of an evolutionary process led by random mutations.
Both are contrary to observation, and the absurdity of each claim is the main reason to believe the other.
By Brian Eargle on Apr 28, 2012 | Reply
The advantage of HISTORICAL young earth creation over the THEORY of evolution is the first-hand, eye-witness, personal testimony in Genesis 1 by the only Person Who was there to observe it.
Mr. Sanspoul, you may be of a philosophical persuasion that depends upon a dualism between mind (or consciousness) and body (or material existence). I am disposed to a unified view of historical fact, both known and undiscovered, as distinguished from manifold ideas of historical conjecture which each develop from a hypothetical past to the observable fact of the present reality. Whereas many scientists, so-called, hold to a multiplicity of finite or infinitely regressing models to represent origins, I believe that there exists a unique, real, and factual historical event of creation, limited only by our ability to know of it.
My personal observation of nature and physics is almost completely congruent with Genesis 1, with a few exceptions or inconsistencies that I must put on hold pending more wisdom, light, and knowledge. On the other hand, physical observations in general are much at odds with evolution theory, requiring cognitive disconnects that may be acceptable to a carnival conman, but which do not conform to the scientific method and rigorous testing and analysis.
For example, evolution theory fails the “Is it replicable?” test of the scientific method, there being no known observation of living organisms originating from inorganic matter. No worries: creationists cannot replicate God’s creation of the heavens and the earth either. Creationists would have to be God to do that – and we are not He, if there was ever any doubt. ;^)
But evolution theory cannot even satisfactorily explain the fossil record of living organisms, beginning with the Cambrian layer, suddenly appearing out of nothing. But the worldwide Noahic flood, c. 2500 B.C., explains the Cambrian Explosion perfectly.
Scientists, so-called, once held forth a steady-state, infinite regression model of the universe, in which the mass and energy of the universe collapsed into a black hole. The black hole continued to collapse and condense until it exploded in a quasar-like event, resulting in an expanding universe. The universe continued to expand until it ran out of momentum and fell back in upon itself, collapsing into a universe-sized black hole. This process was supposed to have repeated itself, regressing back into infinity.
Problem was, time does not go backwards (except one time for God’s 10-step program; see 2 Kings 20:8-11). Problem was, Newton’s First Law of Motion indicates that momentum does not dissipate or disappear in empty space, where gravity, magnetism, and air resistance are non-existent. Problem was, entropy, the capacity of work which can be extracted in a closed system, tends to zero over time. After an infinite time, entropy would be nil. But work can be extracted within our present reality without a transcendent source. Such non-nil entropy proves that time past is not infinite in our closed system, the created universe.
No problem, the universe did not always exist; it came into existence a finite number of years ago.
Likewise, a finite origins model, e.g., the big bang theory, requires a Prime Cause of virtually infinite power to create (leading up to the origins event) a pre-existing plasma soup collapsed (for at least a finite and non-nil instant of time) to an astronomical object containing the mass-energy of the universe, but with (virtually) no space between component galaxies, stars, atoms, and sub-atomic wave-particle thingies – waves of unimaginable energy and/or particles occupying equally unimaginably small space, whatever “space” means within a universe-object where space as we know it is collapsed to the infinitesimal, to nothing, or to non-existence. I can only understand such a powerful Prime Cause, One transcending matter, space, and time. as the God of the Bible, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Mr. Sanspoul, I am not qualified to debate dualism or duality with you, whether a dualism of evolution and creation, or yin/yang, or Plato’s form and matter, or Aristotle’s non-material mind as distinguished from the material brain in the human body, or Aquinas’ soul and material existence, or Buddhist Enlightenment as transcending time and space, or three types of mind-matter dualism, or four varieties of dualist mental causation, or extra-physical states of consciousness as distinguished from matter, the wave-particles of quantum physics . . . although I would like FUD-mongering confusionists to publicly acknowledge that the Heisenberg Principle only applies to that which is infinitesimally small from our human point of reference, and not to the material objects which humans perceive naturally – unless possibly from the point of reference of a Heavenly Being for Whom VY Canis Majoris, the “Big Dog” of all stars, is a plaything.
If your personal observation does involve mind-body dualism and the illusory nature of physical reality, may I recommend to you the philosophical works of Christian apologist Dr. J. P. Moreland of Biola University.
By Cheryl Melancon Melody on Apr 28, 2012 | Reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab3H4SlqG2Y&feature=related Watching this right now. Sacred Geometry and Unified Fields, evidence that the universe is one….mind-blowing.
By Richard Carr on Jan 5, 2013 | Reply
Nathan, I think denying evolution at this point is incredibly stupid. It completely works in theory, and we’ve seen it work in practice, there was one example of these worms who adapted over a period of 40 years to live In irradiated soil. Evolution is almost certainly existent. So now, you have three choices; deny the bible because if this and become an atheist, completely ignore all the evidence and remain a creationist, or keep your faith whilst taking the evidence into account and become and believe in evolutionary creationism. Religion has to keep up with modern science. If you are stubborn and ignore it, that won’t get you anywhere.