These were just a few of the questions that motivated us at BioLogos to commission a survey of pastors on origins.  In 2012, the Barna Group conducted 743 telephone interviews with pastors from across the US, from churches big and small, and from all Christian denominations.  This comprehensive, in-depth survey provides a fascinating analysis of views held by clergy today.   In the coming month, we’ll be digging deeper into the survey results, but for now, here are some key highlights:

#1: Pastors hold a diversity of views on origins.

Overall, while a slight majority of the pastors surveyed fall under the label of Young Earth Creationism (54%), sizeable portions of clergy accept Progressive Creation (15%) and Theistic Evolution (18%).

The numbers varied widely based on a number of factors, however. Pastors of mainline churches were most likely to accept Theistic Evolution, while non-Mainline, Charismatic, and Southern Baptist pastors were overwhelmingly Young Earth Creationists. Pastors of larger churches were also more likely to accept Theistic Evolution.

Regionally, the highest percentage of YEC pastors was found in South, while the highest percentage of pastors accepting TE was in the Midwest. Pastors from the western states were the least likely to accept TE.

#2: Most pastors think science and faith questions are important.

Regardless of their views, the majority of pastors surveyed feel that the Church needs to look at how it handles issues of science. 72% of pastors with YEC views and 73% of pastors with TE views agree with the statement that “the Christian community needs to take a serious look at its understanding of science and human origins in order to maintain its witness in the world.” (The numbers are slightly lower for pastors who hold to Progressive Creation and who are uncertain).

Similarly, 66% of YEC pastors and 61% of both TE and Progressive Creation pastors agree that “younger adults today are more concerned than ever about whether faith and science are compatible.”

#3: Clergy think disagreements on science and faith harm our witness (but for different reasons).

Clergy across all three viewpoints feel that disagreements are harming the Church’s outreach, but they differ in how they view that harm.

YEC pastors overwhelming agreed (85%) that “Christian disagreement on matters of creation and evolution is compromising our witness to the world.” However, a majority of TE pastors disagreed with the statement (63%).

Conversely, a majority of TE pastors (63%) agreed that “The church’s posture toward science prevents many non-Christians from accepting Christianity,” while a majority of YEC and Progressive Creation leaning pastors disagreed (59%).

#4: Pastors aren’t avoiding science.

The majority of pastors think that addressing issues of science for their congregations is an important part of their work. Of those surveyed, 72% felt that addressing science issues in the local community was somewhat (51%) or very (21%) urgent. When asked about science on a national and global level, even more pastors felt that addressing science issues is important (43% somewhat and 46% very). Furthermore, 79% of pastors included scientific themes in at least one sermon in the past year, and 40% had included them in at least ten sermons.

The majority of clergy across all four viewpoints also agreed with the statement “Just as scripture should influence human interpretation of science, science should also inform our understanding of scripture.” The numbers were highest for TE pastors and those who are uncertain (81% and 72%, respectively), though over half of YEC and PC pastors also agreed (52% and 65%, respectively).

Finally, although YEC’s are more reluctant than other pastors to say “science should inform understanding of scripture, they strongly agree (84%) that “The Christian community needs a greater commitment to showing how young earth creationism is consistent with science.”

#5: However, they are concerned about evolution for biblical reasons.

Over half of pastors said they had “major concerns” about the idea that God used evolution. The main reasons for that concern were that the idea “undermines the authority of Scripture” (64%), “views portions of the Bible as non-literal, like Genesis” (62%), “raises doubts about a historical Adam and Eve” (61%), and “raises questions about how and when death and sin entered the world” (59%). However, 26% of pastors saw no concern with the idea that God used evolution.

#6: The majority of clergy accept parts of scripture as symbolic.

60% of the pastors surveyed felt that “some portions of the Bible are symbolic, but all that it teaches is authoritative.” Clergy whose views fall under theistic evolution and progressive creation were more likely to accept this statement (79% and 73% respectively), but a sizeable number of YEC pastors (40% among the core followers and 49% among those leaning towards YEC) also agreed with the statement.

#7: Clergy are concerned that changing their views on origins might compromise their ministry.

Over half of pastors (58%) who fell under the YEC category agreed that “If you publicly admitted your own doubts about human origins, you feel you would have a lot to lose in your ministry.” 41% of pastors in the Progressive Creation group also agreed with the statement. Pastors who were uncertain or who fell under the Theistic Evolution group were less concerned, with only 26% and 17% respectively agreeing with the statement.

In this video Conversation, Denis Alexander addresses two prominent barriers for Christians to accept evolutionary creation. The first is Biblical interpretation. When contemporary Christians interpret the early chapters of Genesis literally, they do so out of a desire to take the text seriously. Yet the early church fathers saw these chapters as figurative—and that figurative interpretation did not lesson the important foundational truths taught in these passages. The contemporary literal reading is actually a modern approach to the text in that our scientific mindset inappropriately shapes the interpretation. Since science did not even exist at the time that Genesis was written, an overly literal interpretation can actually cause us to miss the inspired message that the Biblical authors were communicating.

The second barrier is the rhetoric of the New Atheists, who claim that it is impossible to accept evolution while still believing in God. Christians should challenge this. Traditional Christian views are not in conflict with modern science. Instead, they see nature as God's work, with St. Augustine writing that "nature is what God does." As humanity develops a scientific understanding of nature, we will only learn more about the handiwork of God. 

Grantees will benefit from in-person interaction through a series of summer workshops in 2013, 2014, and 2015. These meetings will not only foster a broader knowledge base, but will build a sustained network of scholars and church leaders, both young and seasoned, who are serious about addressing the concerns of the church about evolution. Also in 2015, in connection with the third summer workshop, BioLogos will host a large conference open to scientists, scholars, and church leaders from around the world.

ECF History

In January 2012, BioLogos was awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the John Templeton Foundation to fund the work of scholars and church leaders on evolution and Christian faith. In spring 2012 we worked hard to get the word out. You may have seen announcements on the BioLogos website, in our newsletters, on the Books & Culture, Leadership Journal, or First Things websites, on your professional society’s listserv, or perhaps on your friend’s blog.

The response was overwhelming: we received 225 letters of intent for a total request of $21 million—about seven times the amount we had to offer. We needed to invite the most promising applicants to submit a full proposal, but recognizing the projects with highest potential would require broad expertise. From the beginning, we envisioned that a panel of scientists, pastors, and scholars would oversee the application and review process as well as play key advisory roles throughout the project. A team of eight highly qualified individuals came on board in the early months of the project. They reviewed each proposal and together recommended that BioLogos invite 86 applicants to submit full applications.

The deadline for submissions was October 1, 2012. As in the previous round, the ECF panel evaluated each proposal. In addition, we asked 55 other experts to participate, so that each proposal received 3-4 scores. Criteria for the decision included significance of topic, project design, creativity and innovation, long-term impact potential, feasibility, and budget.

The panel then met together November 29-30, 2012, to make the final funding decisions. In the end, they recommended that BioLogos give 37 awards, ranging from $23,000 to $300,000. BioLogos staff notified applicants of their awards on December 14, 2013.

The Grantees

As part of our objective to create a network of scholars and leaders, we awarded grants to organizations across the U.S. and the world. Thirty of the 37 grantees are domestic; seven are international, hailing from Canada, France, Great Britain, Netherlands, and Spain.

Two-thirds of the accepted projects will be led by teams—some with three or more Project Leaders. We expect that the teamwork and time spent together at our summer workshops will be the start of a long-lasting network of people dedicated to helping the church think carefully about origins.

Applicants chose to apply under one of three program tracks: interdisciplinary scholarship (Track 1), intra-disciplinary scholarship (Track 2), and translational projects (Track 3). Track 1 projects focus on both the collaboration between individuals in different disciplines and the development of projects at the interface of different content areas. Track 2 projects focus on work done within a specific discipline. Track 3 focuses on projects that encourage Christians, especially those within more conservative traditions, to engage in meaningful and productive dialogue to reduce tensions between mainstream science and the Christian faith. The numbers of grantees in Tracks 1, 2, and 3 are 6, 8, and 23, respectively.

Many of the scholarly projects tackle questions about Adam and Eve, the Fall, human identity, and Original Sin—some of the most critical interpretive issues for evangelical theology.  Some examples: 

• Theologian Oliver Crisp of Fuller Seminary will take an analytic theology approach to ask to what extent a theological account of the origin of human sin depends upon the evolution of modern humans from one and only one ancestral pair—especially if that pair does not appear to correspond to what we would think of as modern human beings. 

• Pastor Michael Gulker and philosopher James Smith, leading a large team from The Colossian Forum, ask a related question: if humanity emerged from non-human primates—as genetic, biological, and archaeological evidence seems to suggest—then what are the implications for Christian theology’s traditional account of origins, including both the origin of humanity and the origin of sin? 

• Biologist Dennis Venema of Trinity Western University and New Testament scholar Scot McKnight of Northern Seminary will write a book on the evidence for evolution and population genetics, with informed theological reflection on how these issues interact with orthodox Christianity.

• Biologist David Wilcox of Eastern University will develop an updated model of human identity which reflects the complex recent scientific advances in genetics and paleoanthropology and yet is sensitive to theological concerns.  

These are just a few of the scholarly awards; check out the Grantees page for full descriptions of all Track 1 and Track 2 projects.

All projects have translational potential, but Track 3 projects are designed to meet the needs of a particular constituency within the evangelical church. These projects run the gamut from ethics to education to media production to ministry resources.  Some examples include:

• Theologian Lee Camp of Lipscomb University will produce “The Questions in Monkey Town,” an episode of Tokens, a live variety show that features musical performances, comedic sketches, brief interpretive monologues, and dialog with authors and scholars. The episode will be performed and filmed on the site of the famous Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee.

• Chaplain Joshua Hayashi and Educator Diane Sweeney of the Punahou School in Hawaii will lead a team to produce multimedia curricula aimed at helping high school students connect with their biology curricula and, at the same time, deepen their Christian faith.

• Physics teacher and pastor Benoît Hébert of Science et Foi Chrétienne in France will lead an international, multi-denominational team of French speaking Evangelical scientists, pastors and church leaders to produce a large number of resources on evolutionary creation.

• Pastor Seung-Hwan Kim of Grace Truth Community Church, a Southern Baptist church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will produce teaching and preaching materials about evolution for church leaders.

• President Gregory Wolfe and Director of Resource Development for IMAGE will gather artists and writers of faith whose work explores the dialogue between evolutionary science and faith practice, convening a conversation between them and scientists, theologians, and church leaders in private and public conferences.

Again, this is just a taste of the diversity of Track 3 projects. Read more about each project on the Grantees page. You can look forward to an incredible variety of resources coming out of the ECF program, many of which will be featured right here on the BioLogos Forum.

For many American evangelicals it will come as a surprise to realize just how little Lewis thought was at stake in the scientific question of our biological origins. As we have seen, Lewis had no objection to the notion that “man is physically descended from animals.” Four years after admitting to being shaken by some of the writings from Bernard Acworth’s Evolution Protest Movement, Lewis could still write in a private letter, “I don’t mind whether God made man out of earth or whether ‘earth’ merely means ‘previous millennia of ancestral organisms.’ If the fossils make it probable that man’s physical ancestor’s ‘evolved,’ no matter.”¹ So far as we can tell, Lewis never took the view that belief in mere Evolution, “Evolution in the strict sense,”² “the Evolution of real biologists,” which he took to be “a genuine scientific hypothesis” and “a purely biological theorem”³ was necessarily at odds with a belief in mere Christianity.

Indeed, the final chapter of his classic book Mere Christianity, “The New Men,” assumes an evolutionary picture of life’s origins and development throughout.⁴ He writes,

Perhaps a modern man can understand the Christian idea best if he takes it in connection with Evolution. Everyone knows about Evolution…: everyone has been told that man has evolved from lower types of life.⁵

While Lewis acknowledges that “some educated people disbelieve [the theory of Evolution],” he gives no hint throughout the rest of the chapter that he is one of their number.⁶ In fact, throughout the rest of the chapter he seems to simply assume a broadly evolutionary picture of natural history (as he does in The Problem of Pain and elsewhere). So, for instance, he writes:

Thousands of centuries ago huge, very heavily armoured creatures were evolved.⁷

At the earlier stages living organisms have had either no choice or very little choice about taking the new step [of development]. Progress was, in the main, something that happened to them, not something that they did.

Century by century God has guided nature up to the point of producing creatures (humans) which can (if they will) be taken right out of nature, turned into “gods.”⁹

And he says much more in that vein. While it may be possible to read Lewis as invoking Evolution for purely illustrative purposes without actually believing in it, such a reading seems less than likely given his statements in this chapter and elsewhere. In fact, Lewis offers no hint anywhere in his public writings that he regards evolutionary theory as either untrue or conflicting with mere Christianity.

What Lewis did believe to conflict with Christian faith was what he called the great “Myth” of “Evolutionism” or “Developmentalism.” But this is not the same as evolutionary theory per se. “[We] must sharply distinguish between Evolution as a biological theorem and popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism which is certainly a Myth,” he writes in his essay “The Funeral of a Great Myth.”¹¹ Lewis believed that the great myth of “Evolutionism” conflicted not only with the Christian faith, but with Reason itself, undercutting the grounds for believing in human rationality and, therefore, in any human rationale that could be offered for believing in Evolutionism in the first place. According to Lewis,Evolutionism’s chief premise, namely, Naturalism, invalidates human reasoning itself, amounting to “an argument which proved that no argument was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs—which is nonsense.”¹² “All possible knowledge…depends on reasoning,” he writes in chapter III of Miracles.¹³ “We infer Evolution from fossils: we infer the existence of our own brains from what we find inside the skulls of other creatures like ourselves in the dissecting room.” All sciences, including evolutionary science, depend upon the validity of human inference for their own validity. “Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.”¹⁴ Naturalism, however, with its grand Myth of Evolutionism explains all of reality, including human reason, in terms of non-rational natural causes and effects, reducing all human reasoning to being no more than the accidental byproducts of chance, matter and time, and thereby undercutting the validity of reasoning itself.

However, if one allows, as Lewis apparently did, that God guided the evolution of humanity so as to make us reasonable creatures, then humanity’s descent from the animals in no way undermines the validity of human reasoning. By maintaining the distinction between Evolution as a scientific theory and Evolutionism as a popular Myth it becomes possible for one to be a full-blooded theistic evolutionist with both a robust belief in God and a robust belief in evolution. The distinction frees Christians to accept evolutionary science without knuckling under to reductionistic Scientism. Thus, in the very essay where Lewis most acerbically attacks Evolutionism, “The Funeral of a Great Myth,” Lewis also clearly allows for a form of theistic evolution. Lewis writes:

I am not in the least denying that organisms on this planet may have ‘evolved.’ But if we are to be guided by the analogy of Nature as we know her, it would be reasonable to suppose that this evolutionary process was the second half of a long pattern—that the crude beginnings of life on this planet have themselves been ‘dropped’ there by a full and perfect life.¹⁵

As Lewis makes clear in another piece, “Two Lectures,” the “full and perfect life” by which “this evolutionary process” was “dropped” exists outside of Nature, which is to say, exists outside of the purview of the natural sciences. “Is it not…reasonable to look outside Nature for the real Originator of the natural order?” he asks.¹⁶

Lewis, however, was no Deist. He clearly did not believe that the “crude beginnings of life” were simply “dropped” by God so that the “evolutionary process” would do what it would. Lewis seems to have thought that God at least superintended the evolution of humankind, particularly humanity’s cognitive capacities, in a rather hands-on manner:

For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say “I” and “me,” which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past.¹⁷

Whether this picture of hands-on divine guidance is friendlier towards present day Intelligent Design theory or towards theistic evolution, a la BioLogos, will be a matter for debate. Lewis does not draw the distinctions that are customary in contemporary debates surrounding evolution—macro- versus micro-evolution, Evolution qua mere common descent versus Evolution qua wholly unguided, random process, and so on—making it difficult to say with certainty what he would say if he were here today. It seems likely, however, that Lewis would not have expected the natural sciences to be able to detect God’s supernatural guidance of man’s evolutionary path any more than he expected the modern archaeologist to be able detect the moment when our ancestors crossed the threshold from beast to man, and that likelihood might count as a strike against the ID movement’s claim on Lewis. In any case, Lewis plainly outlines a view that is quite compatible with the standard evolutionary picture of common descent and that hardly amounts to Scientistic reductionism. In short, Lewis made it quite clear in his writings that he believed that there is no real conflict between mere evolution and mere Christianity.

Surprised by Jack

Whatever Lewis may have believed in private, as a spokesperson for the faith, Lewis consistently allowed that mere Christianity was compatible with mere evolutionary science, and he even took the trouble to articulate his understanding of the Fall in such a way as to harmonize it with his belief in human evolution. While some recent writers have attempted to wield Lewis as weapon in intra-Evangelical debates around Evolution, to wield a thinker is, as Martin Buber says, to treat that thinker as an ‘It’ rather than as a ‘Thou,’ to treat him as an object to be used rather than as person with the right and capacity to defy our expectations.¹⁸ We evangelicals have become so accustomed to inserting quotable quotes from Lewis’s corpus into our sermons, books, power-point presentations, Facebook walls, and Twitter feeds that we drowsily pass over the surprising elements of his thought—the elements not easily reconciled with our clean-cut theological shibboleths—without even noticing. This is an intellectual habit ripe to be broken, and it is high time we allowed the real Jack to shatter the cultural icon—indeed, the mirror—we have made out of him. At this watershed moment in the history of the Church, when so much seems to threaten to upend the faith once delivered—whether scientific or archaeological discoveries, cultural trends, or newfangled philosophies—there is doubtless much that the greatest modern exponent of mere Christianity can teach us to help us navigate these troubled times. But it is only by opening ourselves to being surprised by Jack that we will be capable of actually learning something from him.

Notes

1. C.S. Lewis to Joseph Cranfield, Feb. 28, 1955, unpublished letter, Wade Center Collection, Wheaton College, as cited in West, “Darwin in the Dock,” 113
2. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?,” in The Weight of Glory, 137
3. Lewis, “The Funeral of a Great Myth,” 85, 86
4. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 185-91
5. Ibid, 185
6. Ibid
7. Ibid, 186
8. Ibid, 187
9. Ibid, 188, my italics
10. Ibid
11. Ibid
12. Ibid, 24
13. Lewis, Miracles, 23
14. Ibid
15. Lewis, “The Funeral of a Great Myth,” in Christian Reflections, 91
16. Lewis, “Two Lectures,” in God in the Dock,
17. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 68
18. Buber, I and Thou, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996)

“Theistic evolution” has been discussed by that name since at least 1877, and one of the first to do so was the great Canadian geologist John W. Dawson, in his book, The Origin of the World, According to Revelation and Science (1877). In the midst of a lengthy discussion of the animals created on the fifth day of creation, he says:

The long time employed in the introduction of the lower animals, the use of the terms “make,” and “form,” instead of “create,” and the expression “let the waters bring forth,” may well be understood as countenancing some form of mediate creation, or of “creation by law,” or “theistic evolution,” as it has been termed; but they give no countenance to the idea either of the spontaneous evolution of living beings under the influence of merely physical causes and without creative intervention, or of the transmutation [evolution] of one kind of animal into another. (p. 225)

As the final part of this sentence implies, Dawson was (ironically) a staunch opponent of both human evolution and the common ancestry of other animals; in short, by no reasonable definition was he a theistic evolutionist, even though he thought that a great deal of change had taken place naturally, “within certain limits” that he associated with the created “kinds” spoken of in Genesis. Indeed, references to “theistic evolution” are probably no less common among opponents of the view (including William Jennings Bryan in the 1920s) than among proponents, but I won’t attempt to enumerate further examples.

In recent years, however, some proponents of TE have endorsed alternative labels for their position(s). The most prominent example is Francis Collins, the geneticist who started BioLogos. Collins uses the term “BioLogos” itself as the label for his overall position, which fits well within my TE category. The evangelical theologian Denis Lamoureux, one of the most qualified of all writers on this topic (he has earned doctorates in both theology and biology), strongly prefers the term, “Evolutionary Creation” (EC), precisely because he thinks the noun “creation” ought to have more emphasis than the adjective “evolutionary,” something that the term “theistic evolution” does not accomplish. I recommend his book of that title to anyone who wants an authoritative analysis of both biblical and scientific aspects of the origins controversy. The main ideas are clearly presented in his web lectures. Another highly qualified proponent of TE, George Murphy, also has reservations about the term, but he recognizes its wide recognition and agrees with the idea itself, that “Evolution is God’s way of creating”. I will have more to say about Murphy, a very important voice, in a subsequent post.

Despite these quite reasonable objections to the term, I continue to use the “TE” term, partly because it has historical continuity and I’m an historian, and partly because it’s easily recognized. If anyone wants to object, however, they won’t get objections from me, unless their own reasons aren’t reasonable. My only request: define your terms as clearly as I’ve defined mine.

Because the term is broad and a bit hazy, more should be said about it. When we talk about “Intelligent Design” next month, I’ll tell you that it’s a “big tent” (something proponents of that view also say), insofar as it glosses over the biblical and theological issues that have usually separated Christians into various “camps” (such as the various positions we are now studying) when it comes to origins. TE is also a “big tent,” in that adherents differ strongly amongst themselves on theological and biblical issues. Unlike ID, however, theology is openly discussed—and competing theologies of God, nature, and humanity are openly advocated, not left implicit. We’ll say more about this next time. This column presents one type of TE, a type favored by many evangelical scientists and scholars. For example, the people I will discuss all accept (as far as I can tell) the Incarnation and Resurrection—that is, they are Trinitarian Christians who believe that Jesus was fully divine (and fully human) and that the disciples went to the right tomb, only to find it empty, before encountering the risen Christ in diverse places. They also believe in creation ex nihilo, the classical view (illustrated at the start of this column) that God brought the universe into existence out of nothing. There are other types of TE, some of which are not (in my opinion) sufficiently biblical, or even sufficiently Christian, to be part of this series. Please keep that in mind as we proceed: don’t tar all TEs with the same brush—something that happens all too often elsewhere. Let knowledge, not ignorance, be our guide.

Core Tenets or Assumptions of Theistic Evolution

(1) The Bible is NOT a reliable source of scientific knowledge about the origin of the earth and the universe, including living things—because it was never intended to teach us about science.

This reflects not only modern scientific knowledge, but also (more importantly) modern biblical scholarship. Peter Enns and some other evangelical scholars have recently stressed this point, initiating a firestorm in the evangelical academic community that, so far, has confirmed my view that evangelicals in general are just not ready to deal with this, even though it is consistent with the classical notion of accommodation. My own comments about the magnitude of the problem, written before the firestorm started, can be found here.

(2) The Bible IS a reliable source of knowledge about God and spiritual things.

Remember the quip that Galileo attributed to Cesare, Cardinal Baronio, “The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.” (We discussed this earlier in the series). Evolution was not an issue in Galileo’s day, but this platitude is frequently quoted by advocates of TE—and often without proper attribution to Baronio. Commonality obviously lies in the attitude, not the topic. Many critics of TE are willing to adopt Galileo’s approach when it comes to the Solar System, but not when it comes to evolution: they are anxious to keep Galileo out of the garden of Eden.

Portrait of Cesare, Cardinal Baronio,
attributed to Caravaggio (1602-3) (Source)

(3) Scientific evidence is irrelevant to the Bible—it is simply not a science book.

See above. This needs to be stated separately, since some believers look to science for “proof” of the Bible, just as some unbelievers look to science for “disproof.” Proponents of TE stress that science and the Bible aren’t like apples and oranges; rather, they are more like apples and rocks: you can hold one in each hand without tension, but they have very little in common. We wouldn’t look for God in the phone book, or in an automobile repair manual. Don’t look for science in the Bible. In principle, scientific theories neither support nor threaten the Bible.

(4) The creation story in Genesis 1 is a confession of faith in the true creator, intended to refute pantheism and polytheism, not to tell us how God actually created the world.

This is meant to echo what we said about the Framework View. It is not necessarily true that all TEs accept the Framework View or something like it, but many do. Most would probably say that the Bible is not contradicted by any specific scientific theory of biological diversity—unless that theory oversteps its philosophical boundaries and functions as a kind of religion, what Conrad Hyers called “dinosaur religion.”

(5) The Bible tells us THAT God created, not how God created

Again, this sounds like the Framework View—or, at least, it should. Belief in God the creator is consistent with science, and even supported by some aspects of science; but, it is not a substitute for scientific explanations.

An Assignment: It’s Your Turn to Read and Write

Astronomer Owen Gingerich has written an eloquent little TE book, God’s Universe. A number of quotations have been compiled here. My review for First Things identifies some of the key theological and philosophical issues related to TE. Please follow these links, study what you find, and offer comments below. If anyone has actually read the book itself, your views would be particularly valuable to include.

Looking Ahead

In our next column in two weeks, we continue our discussion of Theistic Evolution, focusing on some crucial theological aspects of TE. In the meantime, please do the “assignment” and get back to us.

No Football Coaches

When I explain this position to students, I like to start with a little puzzle. Many years ago, after attending an academic conference in a major city, I was driving through the rural countryside some distance away, en route to an historic house that wasn’t well marked. As I got closer to where I thought I might start seeing some signs directing me to the house, I noticed a fair-sized hotel, restaurant, and bar off to one side of the road. What really caught my attention was a sign, prominently displayed at the start of the driveway, warning off a certain clientele: NO FOOTBALL COACHES, it said. Unfortunately I’d forgotten my camera, but this is pretty much what I saw.

When I show it in class, I ask the students to guess what this was all about: why such a sign outside of such a place? The stories they come up with are pretty good. My favorite involves two neighboring high schools, arch rivals, with the football coach at one having an affair with the wife of his opposite number, resulting in fist-fights in that bar every fall, when friends of one man or the other would go at each other in the bar, which was on the highway connecting the two school districts. After a few students have tried their luck to no avail, someone asks, where did this take place? Was it maybe in England, where football means soccer and coach means bus? Give that student an A, I say. It was England, on a highway running between York and Manchester. Now, who can fill in the blanks? Almost right away, a student will explain that soccer fans in England can be pretty rambunctious, and that a busload of them might not make the best impression on the rest of the clientele at a respectable country inn and pub. Thus, the manager would rather not have their business.

The take-away message, of course, is that there is always a context in which the meaning of a text is embedded. Unless you know something about the time and place in which a text is composed, you aren’t going understand what it actually says. The same is true for any part of the Bible, including the opening verses of Genesis. That’s the bottom line for the Framework View: if you don’t know anything about literature and culture in the Ancient Near East, you won’t understand what Genesis is really saying.

Core Tenets or Assumptions of the Framework View

(1) The “days” in Genesis have nothing to do with historical time; they are literary devices, employed by God in order to communicate the story of the creation in terms that we can understand.

This sounds like an example of the principle of accommodation, and it should. The activities of the six days of creation are arranged into a “framework” of two triads (days 1-3 and days 4-6), with parallel types of activities in each triad.

Thus, light is created on the first “day,” and on the fourth “day” God makes the Sun and Moon, the two great lights in the firmament that produce light and “rule over” the day and the night. The air and sea appear on the second “day,” and on the fifth “day” God fills them with birds and fish, etc. In other words, the order of events seems to be more logical than chronological. The key element is the fourth day: as we noted in our discussion of Concordism, the Sun was not made until the fourth day, yet it was expressly given the task of producing the day and the night and we’ve had “evening and morning” since the first day. What’s going on here? How can this be taken “literally”? Advocates of the Framework view see a solution in the parallel triads.

Another way to see this focuses on the second verse in the Bible, which reads (in the American Standard Version, a translation that follows the Hebrew closely), “And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” God is confronted by darkness, a watery abyss, and a formless earth—each of these features posing a problem for God, who deals with them in the subsequent six “days.” First, on “days” 1 to 3, God prepares the heavens and the Earth to be a home for the great creatures to come, by separating light from darkness, separating waters above the firmament from waters below the firmament, and causing the dry land to “appear” and to “put forth” vegetation. Then, on “days” 4 to 6, God makes the creatures and puts them in the places God has prepared—the Sun and Moon in the “firmament of heaven (day 4), birds in the air and fish in the seas (day 5), and finally “the beasts of the earth” and “man” on the land (day 6).

We emphasize that the Framework View is simply about the Bible, not about science. The Earth and the universe can be as “young” or “old” as anyone wishes to claim, because the literary form of early Genesis leaves this an open question. The “days” were probably meant to be understood “literally” as ordinary days, but only in the context of a literary form that was not meant to be understood literally, when taken as a whole.

What about the seventh “day”? Because it lacks a “morning” and an “evening” in the text (have you ever noticed this?), some authors interpret the seventh “day” as a prophetic reference to God’s own eternal rest, which has not yet begun and which we will share with God in the eschatological future. An OEC book I discussed in my column on Concordism, Robert Newman’s Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth (1977), advocates this interpretation (see pp. 65-66), and so do some advocates of the Framework View.

(2) When seen against the cultural and literary context of the Ancient Near East (ANE), it is clear that Genesis was written to combat the polytheism and pantheism of other creation stories. It was not written to provide a scientifically accurate account of the creation.

This is why the Sun and Moon are not even named on the fourth day: they were worshipped as divine beings by many people in the ANE, and the Hebrew author(s) of Genesis intentionally omit their names as an act of defiance against worshippers of those two false gods. (Remember: for the ancient Egyptians, the Sun was the chief god.) Furthermore, the stars are mentioned simply as an afterthought, at the end of verse 16: “And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” This was done deliberately, as a way of belittling the Babylonians and others who worshipped them. Indeed, the whole creation account stands in the face of polytheism, by affirming that the one true, invisible God has actually created all visible things, including the heavenly bodies. Nothing we see is divine: this is the essence of monotheism, stated bluntly and boldly.

(3) It is not possible to find a close match between what is proclaimed in Genesis—that God is the creator—and the details of natural history. We should not approach this text with inappropriate expectations.

For many readers, the crucial question awaits: according to the Framework View, is Genesis 1-3 historical in any meaningful sense? Here there is a division of the house, with authors falling into either of these two camps:

(1) Genesis 1-3 is an historical narrative (though not strictly chronological), not a creation myth. As Lee Irons and Meredith Kline emphasize in The G3N3S1S Debate, “The framework interpretation does not teach that creation was a nonhistorical event” (p. 220). The universe was actually created, Adam and Eve were the first humans, and the Fall was a real historical event. Some OECs like this approach, which can be seen as a looser type of Concordism than the day-age theory; Bernard Ramm’s “moderate concordism” might be understood as fitting into this category, even though he did not discuss the Framework View per se.

(2) Genesis 1-3 is not an historical narrative; it resembles some other, older ANE creation stories. Conrad Hyers advances this view in his book, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science ; see below. Some aspects of the story reflect this: the days, the progression from chaos to order, and the creation of humans from mud or clay. These are common to other ANE stories, and they are present in Genesis because that’s what hearers in the ANE expected such stories to include. Other aspects of Genesis, however, are profoundly unlike other ANE stories: the transcendence of God and the de-deification of nature. These constitute the crucial, timeless, substantive message that God has revealed to us. Theistic evolutionists tend to like this non-historical approach, which is not usually seen as a kind of Concordism.

Historical Comments

The Framework View is modern, but its attitude toward the Genesis “days” is similar to that held by Augustine. As I explained in an earlier column, he taught that God created all things at once and told us about it in the pattern of six days, in order that we could understand it. The days themselves, however, were “unknowable” and not meant as a “literal” description of the passage of time.

In the 19th century, the German scholar J. H. Kurtz put forth an interpretation that Ramm called the “pictorial day” view, which he considered to be a type of “Moderate Concordism,” the overall position that Ramm himself favored. Kurtz described the creation story as “prophetico-historical tableaux, [in] which are represented before the eye of the mind, scenes from the creative activity of God, each one of which represents some grand division of the great drama, some prominent phase of the development” (The Bible and Astronomy, 1861 Philadelphia edition, p. 110). His Scottish contemporary Hugh Miller, one of the most prolific and influential evangelical writers of his day, endorsed Kurtz’ interpretation, holding that “the form and nature of the revelation” in Genesis was “conveyed by a succession of sublime visions” (The Testimony of the Rocks, 1857 Boston edition, p. 180).

The Framework View itself, with the “days” arranged in parallel triads, was first proposed in 1924 by the Dutch scholar Arie Noordzij and made more widely known by another Dutch scholar, N. H. Ridderbos. His book—Is There a Conflict Between Genesis 1 and Natural Science?—was translated into English in 1957. Subsequently, Kline and the French theologian Henri Blocher have been its most prominent supporters.

An Assignment: It’s Your Turn to Read and Write

I’ve done most of the heavy lifting in this series, but now it’s your turn. As a way of getting into all three of the views we’ve studied thus far (not simply the Framework View), I’d like everyone to read an article by Conrad Hyers, “Dinosaur Religion: On Interpreting and Misinterpreting the Creation Texts,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 36 (September 1984): 142-48. The questions below are intended as helpful suggestions; feel free to discuss other matters as well!

1. What does Hyers mean by “dinosaur religion”?

2. What is Hyers’ most basic objection to “creation science,” the YEC view?

3. What does Hyers believe to be the true message of Genesis One?

4. Overall, do you agree with what Hyers says? Why or why not? Whether or not you agree, do you have any critical comments?

NOTE: Hyers wrote a sequel, “The Narrative Form of Genesis 1: Cosmogonic, Yes; Scientific, No,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 36 (December 1984): 208-15, in which he employs an interpretive scheme highly similar to the Framework View, although that term is not used. I encourage you to read this also, but our discussion will focus on the first article.

Looking Ahead

In our next column on August 14, we begin a lengthy discussion of Theistic Evolution. Although that is the view advocated (under an alternative name) by BioLogos, I will approach it no differently. After explaining its central tenets, we’ll examine them critically and outline its history. Between now and then, I’m keen to see your responses to the assigned reading. If you gotten this far, you’re more than just a casual reader. Tell us what you think of Hyers’ ideas.

In his book The Greatest Show on Earth (2009) on the first page of the second chapter, Dawkins raises the interesting question: “Why did it take so long for a Darwin to arrive on the scene?” After suggesting possible answers he approvingly quotes the late Ernest Mayr's suspicion as the most insightful answer to this question. According to Dawkins, Mayr’s suspicion is: “The culprit was the ancient philosophical doctrine of---to give it its modern name—essentialism. The discovery of evolution was held back by the dead hand of Plato [Dawkins' language].” Later in his book, Dawkins states boldly that evolution is anti-essentialist, a point Mayr made in other places. One can find the same argument, if not the same language, in the writings of Edward O. Wilson where the idea of nature trumps any idea of something existing above experience. Clearly, I am not the first one to consider this argument. I think, however, that further discussion regarding the implications of essentialism for evolutionary models remains important especially for theists in particular and humanity in general. At the heart of this discussion is the matter of ontology, the nature of being. While evolution speaks to the development of what is, it necessarily carries with it very strong ontological implications, implications that affect views on the nature of being. If the idea of essence has no currency in the discussion of reality, then the thing itself is all there is and, hence, quickly becomes the object complete in itself.

It seems that essentialism (I use this term with Christian emphasis), if true, would seriously challenge any form of evolution where different species evolve through common descent. The point that Mayr and others have made turns on the idea that essentialism provided the philosophical foundation for the idea of fixity of species from at least the time of Plato. If right, that would make evolution, in the sense of producing new species, suspicious if not impossible. Furthermore, it seems that essentialism cannot be easily dismissed simply because it is associated with Plato. One must consider the philosophical/theological legitimacy of essentialism based on the merits of its own claims within the discussion of the nature of reality. With that said, if Mayr and others are right about essentialism, then the question to be taken up is whether essentialism has any ground upon which to stand, especially within Christian theology.

Generally speaking, essentialism teaches there is more to reality of the thing than what is presented to the senses which, is to say there is more to reality than the biological dimension (we might say DNA). It is the material that provides a means of expression of the essence. A member belonging to a natural kind is so because of its essence and all members belonging to this natural kind must have this essence or it does not belong. In this way, natural kinds are distinct from others by virtue of their essence. While essence determines what natural kind to which a thing belongs, there are also non-essential or accidental properties. These help to distinguish one member from another within a natural kind, but these are not determinative for the natural kind itself as they are subject to change while essential properties are not. That is, what makes a cow a cow is the essence belonging to being a cow. Without that, the cow could not be a cow. In other words the idea of essence is what gives stability to natural kinds. If essentialism is true this would, as Dawkins points out, seriously challenge the idea of common ancestry.

Applied to human beings, the essential attributes of humanness are predicated of beings called human beings which distinguishes them from non-human beings –this is not an arbitrary naming. While human beings (a natural kind) share universally the same essence of humanness, they do differ in non-essential properties (short, tall, thin, fat, and so forth). So while the members differ in many non-essential ways, they belong to the same natural kind by their shared essential attributes of humanness.

If what has been called an essence (Plato referred to these as Forms and Augustine as Ideas in the mind of God or eternal reason) explains natural kinds, it is easy to see how this would logically lead to the idea of fixity of species (which may be very broad allowing for a wide range of adaptations and variations within natural kinds which allows for a very rich biological diversity). The suggestion here is that it is time to rethink the matter of essentialism in this discussion. Of course there must be some reason to think that essentialism has merit on its own terms.

The fact that a being is determined by its essence finds support in understanding who Jesus is. Consider what makes Jesus the God-Man. As argued by the early Church Councils, it was His nature (in Greek, OUISA). He had the nature of both---the essence of God and the essence of man. It was not that He had all the outward appearance and DNA function of a man that made him a man---it was more than that. He was a man, precisely because He possessed the nature (essence of a man) and He was God as He had the nature (essence of God). This at least supports the idea that a being is what it is, not by virtue of developmental issues, but because of its essence.

In thinking about essence, one might consider the matter of transubstantiation. One may discount transubstantiation on theological grounds, but it does say something interesting to the discussion of essentialism. It assumes that the bread is of one essence and the body is of another essence. In order for the wine to become blood (a different essence) it would take a miracle as one essence does not give way to a different essence in the process of nature. The idea of transubstantiation is discussed in Aristotelian categories; in this case substantive cause is what Aristotle meant by the whatness of a thing–that is, what makes it what it is. Additionally, Genesis 1:20 notes that living creatures were created according to their own kind (the whatness of the thing) supporting the idea of natural kinds, which is consistent with the idea of fixity of species.

Tomorrow in part 2, Dr. Little makes the case that modern science has unjustifiably marginalized essentialism because it does not fit within a purely physical understanding of reality.

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Today's sermon is from Richard Dahlstrom, senior pastor of Bethany Community Church in Seattle, Washington. The full sermon can be found here.

Is Genesis 1 describing material creation or functional creation? Pastor Richard Dahlstrom of Bethany Community Church beautifully articulates the insights he has received through John Walton’s book The Lost World of Genesis One and probes deep into the Biblical text with us . In his sermon “Gloriously Functional,” he highlights key Hebrew words that are often misunderstood by post-Enlightenment thinkers in order to generate a proper framework through which to grasp the original meaning of the text. He then examines each day of creation, explaining the function of the various created elements such as light, water, plants, animals, and people, according to the account. This enriching exercise brings the question of “Why has God made this very good, functional creation to begin with?” Dahlstrom affirms along with Walton that Genesis 1 is indeed about God making a temple to dwell in with His people, who he has ordained as priests, stewards over all creation. This is most clearly seen in the striking parallels between the creation narrative and the building of the earthly temple of God in the ancient Hebrew culture.

In addition to this clip from Dahlstrom’s sermon , there is a brief commentary by John Walton himself, which speaks about the functionality rather than materiality of Genesis 1. He states that the creation story is not one of material origins. If this is so, he explains there is no need to defend a Biblical account against an evolutionary account; the two are compatible with each other. What the creation story does offer, however, is a theology on the physical existence of what God has made; it reveals the divine purpose of God for his masterpiece, the universe.

On the other hand, the creation of the world described in scripture is commonly regarded as brief, superficial, and inflexible. Once they’ve read the first three pages of the Bible, most people think they’ve understood it. But if we were to give any scientific topic the same cursory treatment, it would be laughable to think we could draw any conclusions from it.

To make any sense of scripture beyond a crass caricature, one needs to examine it with the same patience and tenacity that one approaches science. It also helps to have a highly developed intellectual toolset: knowledge of ancient languages, ancient history, archaeology, and philosophy. Few people these days have mastered these academic domains, which is partly why we hear such wildly differing claims about creation. While it’s true that some messages of the Bible can be understood by a child, other parts remain opaque unless we are willing to conduct some intense inquiry.

Obviously, most of us don’t have time to learn Hebrew and Mesopotamian history. But neither do we have time to study partial differential equations and quantum mechanics, and that doesn’t stop us from learning and appreciating modern science. For complex topics, we turn to experts who share with us the results of decades of research.

Scientists are skeptical of biblical scholars who are woefully ignorant of contemporary science. If they have such an impoverished understanding of nature, what reason do we have to trust them in spiritual matters? The best response to this challenge is for scholars to become versed in both natural science and theology in order to speak the language of their audience and earn their respect. Professor William P Brown of Columbia Theological Seminary has taken this path in his new book The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder. He puts the scientifically-informed reader at ease by revealing his understanding of modern science and his fascination with its discoveries. Then he proceeds to impart his knowledge of antiquity to make sense of highly contentious passages in scripture.

In addressing the subject of creation, Brown contends that there is not one story but seven contained in the sacred texts of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The books of Genesis, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah each provide unique perspectives of the natural world. Together, they offer a dynamic, robust depiction of the natural world, one filled with awe and wonder. What follows is a brief taste of each.

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Since this narrative appears first in the Bible, it is the most common and well-recognized creation account. Very austere in its tone, it reveals a transcendent God who stands separate from his works. But even here, the cosmos is not a static, passive receptacle made from purely supernatural causes. Instead, waters “produce swarms of living beings” and the earth “brings forth living beings”. Here, God is not a magician performing tricks, but one who empowers a productive, dynamic world.

Image credit: USFWS Pacific

Genesis 2:4-3:24

In contrast to the transcendent God in the first account, this one is like a gardener and potter who shapes a “drama of dirt”. The narrative focuses on “an inhospitable field of clay”, in which God is a responsive participant in his creation. The Adam in this account is made from dirt, as are the other “wild animals and winged creatures”. Made from the same basic substance as his fellow animals, this Adam—in addition to bearing the Imago Dei—also reflects Imago Terrae, the image of the earth.

Job 38-41

More than Genesis or anywhere else in the Bible, the book of Job provides the longest account of the natural world. And nowhere does it mention man’s dominion. God gives Job a tour of creation—wild, diverse, and powerful—and Job discovers that the world does not revolve around him, or even around humanity as a whole. Instead, God tells Job, “Behold Behemoth, which I made with you,” and also says that Behemoth was the “first” or “best” of God’s works. Brown draws an intriguing parallel between Job’s journey and Darwin’s tour on the Beagle, in which both of them encountered creatures that filled them with awe.

Image Credit: Jen Bowman

Psalm 104

This psalm provides a vibrant, celebratory account of the interplay between God and nature. Like in Job, humans play a marginal role in the narrative. Absent is any sense of human dominion—God himself continuously cares for creation. The natural world depicted here is fully good, with one exception—ourselves. Of all the species described here, humans are the only species that the psalmist wishes would “cease from the earth” and “be no more”.

Proverbs 8:22-31

A central theme in Psalms and Proverbs is the acquisition of wisdom, a process that is open-ended, ongoing, and never finished. Wisdom is a fundamental tenet of the Judeo-Christian tradition and is one reason why Christian intellectuals have been a part of modern science since its very beginnings. Proverbs 8 makes clear the priority and importance of wisdom in God’s world. In fact, wisdom existed prior to the creation of the cosmos: “Before YHWH made the earth abroad, and the first clods of soil, when he established the heavens, [Wisdom] was there” (v26-27). Could wisdom actually exist prior to the inception of the physical universe? Certainly not within a purely materialistic philosophy, but according to scripture, “[Wisdom] was YHWH’s delight day by day, playing before him every moment, playing with his inhabited world, delighting in the offspring of Adam.” In the order of creation, wisdom comes first.

Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes resonates well with 20th century existentialism and the somber predictions of science. Rather than describe the origin of the cosmos, Ecclesiastes focuses on the futility of life and its inevitable end: “the sun darkens, even the light, as well as the moon and the stars” (Ecc 12:2). Humans toil like animals and die, returning to the dust from which they were born. Chance and random events appear to govern life: “The race does not belong to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor the bread to the wise, nor wealth to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful, for time and accident befall them all” (9:11-12). According to the author, the highest goals that people can aspire to are “to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him” (5:18), something that you would never expect to hear from a religious text. On the other hand, it is a very accurate description of what we often experience on our planet.

Isaiah 40-55

Isaiah contrasts sharply with Ecclesiastes. Whereas the latter admonishes, “There is nothing new under the sun,” Isaiah tells Israel that God has not abandoned them, and that he continues the process of creation:

“I will open rivers on the bare heights, and foundations in the midst of the valleys;
I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.
I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the pine
I will set in the desert the fir tree, the plane and the cypress together” (41:18-20).

This is not the work of a distant God who only “intervenes” in supernatural displays, but an active God who shapes the world through natural forces and enables it to blossom and thrive. This God values not only life itself, but its great diversity. The seven different trees in this passage-- from the desert acacia to the mountain cedar—represent dramatically varied species and habitats. In Isaiah, creation is not just a six day event, but a continuous process of renewal.

Image Credit: Thomas Burnett

Now we have completed William B. Brown’s tour of the seven models of creation found in scripture. Alone, each is incomplete and subject to misinterpretation, which we frequently hear in popular discourse. But together as a whole, these biblical accounts of creation present a remarkably rich depiction of the physical world, and an even richer depiction of human history and identity. If there is going to be productive dialogue between scientific and religious communities, it requires us to sit down and learn about topics with which we are unfamiliar. Brown’s book offers the reader an opportunity to learn about the richness of scripture itself, as well as see how modern scientific research can enhance, rather than detract from, our understanding of creation accounts.

Top image credit: AgnosticPreachersKid/ Dandelion image credit: Metro Tiff

Introduction

Today BioLogos begins a series that we think ought to have significant impact on evangelical churches far beyond the local congregation in Arlington, Massachusetts where it was first delivered. A recent editorial in Christianity Today stated that many Christians likely face another "Galileo moment." In that earlier era, finding that the earth moved around the sun--and not the other way around--caused the Church to reorient its understanding of certain scriptural passages. Today, interconnecting strands of evidence all of which lie at the heart of biology, geology, physics and astronomy require segments of the Church to carefully evaluate its magnificent creation narrative--it needs to be certain it is hearing God's message in the way that God intends for it to be understood. It is healthy for the conservative wing of Christianity to be carefully examining the genre of the creation narrative. It has had to do this once before and, it is appropriate to prayerfully seek clarity once again. Christians are truth-seekers and God's Spirit will guide the process as we sincerely seek that wisdom which is from above.

Oratory, at its best, has long been an important key in opening the door to new and dramatically important insights. Pastor David Swaim of Highrock Church in the Boston suburb of Arlington illustrates this poignantly. In fact his sermon is so significant, we've asked permission to post it in serial form so that each of us can deeply reflect on his words in a protracted fashion. We encourage you to let others who are conflicted over this issue know about the series so that they can follow it. Indeed, we believe It will be a great series for small group discussions--we need to lovingly support each other as we seek God's guidance in coming to understand God's truths.

In this sermon, Swaim discusses our belief in God as creator, or “Maker of heaven and earth”, as the Apostle’s Creeds so poetically states. To begin, he reminds us that some passages in the Bible, like the parable of the prodigal son, convey deep truths even though they are not historical accounts. Asking “the wrong questions”—questions that focus on arbitrary details—about such stories can cause us to miss out on their intended message. In a similar way, he says, it is possible that we might be asking the “wrong questions” about the opening chapters of Genesis. In recent years, conflict has erupted because a literal reading of Genesis seems to contradict the findings of science. Swaim suggests, however, that accepting scientific evidence about things like evolution and the age of the earth need not rule out faith in Scripture.

If you wish to jump ahead and hear the sermon in its entirety, you may do so here.

Introduction written by the BioLogos editorial team.

"Maker of Heaven and Earth" (transcript)

One of my favorite parables is that of the lost son. There’s a lot to it. Basically, it’s a story that Jesus told about a young man who insulted his father by demanding his share of the inheritance early, then ran off to spend that money on wild living, and found himself destitute when the money was gone. In desperation, he returned to his father, asking to work as a servant. But instead of being angry, his father joyfully embraced his lost son and threw a huge feast to celebrate his return. It is a great story that Jesus tells to help us understand God’s amazing grace.

How many of you know this story? Raise your hand, if you would. Okay. Now I want to make sure I’m clear…that’s a lot of you…I don’t mean just like, you know it because I just told it to you. I mean you know it because you’ve heard a sermon on this before, or maybe you’ve read it on your own. Raise your hand high if that’s true of you. Wow, still a lot of you. That’s perfect because I actually have a couple of questions maybe you can help me with. You see, it says that the father saw the son while he was still a long way off. Can anybody tell me how far off was the son at that point? Anybody know that? Because, you know, they didn’t have glasses back then, and the father was really old, so how far could he really see? It just doesn’t really add up for me. Can anybody tell me about that? Nobody? Okay. Well I have another question. Maybe this one’s easier. What town did that family live in? Does anybody know that? No? Nobody? What town they lived in? People, this is one of the greatest stories of all time! This is a story that has changed thousands of lives, including many of yours! How can you say that you know this story, that you understand this story, if you don’t even understand these basic facts? Okay, well maybe this is easier. Speaking of family, the Bible’s into family values, so I want to know—where’s the mother? Can anybody tell me? Is this family not intact? What’s wrong? Did they get a divorce maybe? And how come the father ended up with the custody of the sons? And why did they only have two? Families back then had much bigger families. Maybe they just got divorced too early? But I mean he seems so nice—why do you think she left? Anybody know these things? I mean I just don’t get it. You all tell me you know this story, and yet you don’t understand just these simple things about it.

Obviously, my questions miss the whole point of the story. There was no mother, or for that matter, no father or son either. This never actually happened. It’s just a parable. It’s one of the many marvelous stories that Jesus told in order to help us understand something that was hard to see. Now does that make it so that this story isn’t true? No, it is true. This story communicates some of the most important truths in the universe—about God’s nature, and the way that we relate to him. There are many passages in scripture that promise God’s love, or praise God’s love, or even try to explain God’s love. But this passage helps us grasp that truth in a way that’s much more effectively communicated than just through direct reporting. This way helps us feel it. This event never happened, but it’s one of the truest stories in the world. And what a shame for someone to dismiss it as irrelevant because it’s not literal history, or miss the point by asking the wrong kinds of questions.

Now I bring this up because just like my questions miss the point of the lost son parable, so, I fear, many of us ask the wrong questions about the beginning of the book of Genesis, which we read from just a few minutes ago. Not only does this generate needless confusion and division, it also makes us miss the point, miss the life-changing truths that we could see if we asked the right questions. Right now we’re in a sermon series studying the Apostle’s Creed, an ancient declaration of faith in the God of the Bible. And today, we’re considering the word “creator.” So, Genesis seemed like the right place to go.

Like the story of the lost son, most of you know the basic outline: God created the universe in six days and then napped on the seventh (so those of you who nap through my sermons every Sunday, you’re in good company!). But by adding up all the names of the people mentioned in Genesis, and throughout the rest of the Bible, seventeenth century Bishop Ussher determined that the creation of Adam and Eve, and everything else, happened in 4,004 BC—about 6,000 years ago. And that’s great. But you’re probably also aware that this creates some tension with contemporary scientists who suggest a different timeline. Considering the evidence offered by the size and expansion rate of the universe, plate tectonics, fossil evidence, and genetics, their best guess is that the universe was created by a big bang about 13 billion years ago, the earth appeared about 4.5 billion years ago, and the earliest humans existed about 200,000 years ago. In the past 300 years, this has become a very heated debate. Apparently, we need to choose whether we believe in science or in scripture. At least that’s the claim made by the most strident voices on each side, so the general population seems to have accepted that if you believe in God you can’t believe in evolution, and if you believe in evolution then you can’t believe in God.

This topic arouses passions and anxieties in many people, including some in this room. No matter what your perspective is, I’m probably going to say something today that you’ll disagree with, and might even make you angry. There’ll be plenty of time for you to set me straight in the coming weeks. But for the next half hour, in order to allow the possibility that we might hear something new, or even learn from the Holy Spirit, let’s lay aside our defensiveness so that we can at least consider why we are so attached to whatever ideas we have, and evaluate whether our devotion to one truth may be blinding us to others. As scientists have discovered more and more evidence supporting the basic evolutionary theory outlined in Darwin’s Origin of Species, Christians have responded in a variety of ways.

Science has been right about so many things, so some Christians have embraced evolution and felt forced to abandon their trust, not only in the truth of Scripture, but also in the God it describes. Other Christians, including many renowned scientists, have fought back by pointing out the many flaws in evolutionary theory and proposing alternative theories of their own. These include Young Earth Creation, which asserts that the earth was created in six days six thousand years ago, and offers thoughtful explanations to reconcile the findings of science with the words of Genesis 1. Old Earth Creationists do the same thing, but contend that each of the days in Genesis could represent an epoch, or a million years, or whatever amount of time, instead of just a 24-hour day. This is linguistically legitimate—it’s a fine interpretation of the Hebrew word “day” in Genesis—and it recognizes that it’s hard to measure a day before the invention of the sun in day four, anyway. So, Old Earth Creationism opens up many possibilities to reconcile scientific claims about the age of the earth with a literal interpretation of Genesis. Theistic Evolution takes further steps to accommodate evolution while still honoring God as the one who created heaven and earth and everything in them through the evolutionary process. This is attractive because it eliminates the conflict between science and scripture, but it requires a very different way of reading Genesis. They suggest that, like I did with the parable of the prodigal son earlier, perhaps we’re asking the wrong questions about Genesis so that we’re inventing an unnecessary argument, and even worse, we’re also missing what the first chapters of Genesis really are all about.

In the next installment, to be posted tomorrow, Pastor Swaim goes on to discuss the Genesis passage in detail.

]]> Thu, 27 Oct 11 05:00:06 -0700 David Swaim http://biologos.org/essays/the-biologos-foundation-and-darwins-pious-idea?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/essays/the-biologos-foundation-and-darwins-pious-idea?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In this paper, theologian John Wesley Wright reviews Connor Cunningham's book Darwin's Pious Idea, a work that deeply explores the integration of Darwinian evolutionary theory and Christian faith. Darwin's Pious Idea, a work that deeply explores the integration of Darwinian evolutionary theory and Christian faith.]]> Wed, 19 Oct 11 13:50:46 -0700 John Wesley Wright http://biologos.org/blog/a-young-earth-creationists-perspective?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/a-young-earth-creationists-perspective?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication In this video, Aaron Daly offers his thoughts on theistic evolution, creation, and how Christians should handle disagreements over these issues. Most of all, Aaron highlights the need for love in our discussions with one another, especially when we disagree.

Today's video is courtesy of filmmaker Ryan Pettey, director/editor of Satellite Pictures.

In this video, young earth creationist Aaron Daly offers his thoughts on theistic evolution, creation, and how Christians should handle disagreements over issues such as the age of the earth and how God created. Most of all, however, Aaron highlights the need for love in our discussions with one another, especially when we disagree.

Each Saturday, we present an ongoing series recognizing sermons (and the pastors who give them) that are helping to promote the harmony of science and faith. Today's sermon comes from the late John Stott, who passed away last week. In honor of Stott’s work in promoting “balanced and thinking biblical faith”, we feature an audio excerpt from Stott’s address “Genesis 1: Called to Full Humanity”, which he delivered at the Lambeth Conference in 1998. The full audio can be found here..

On July 27, 2011, renowned evangelical John Stott passed away at the age of 90. His work was integral in moving conservative evangelicalism from a minority faith movement, particularly in his home country of England, to one of the leading movements in modern Christianity. Stott was a man of many talents – teacher, pastor, author, leader, Biblical expositor – and many passions -- missions, social issues, evangelism, intellectual growth. He was a man regularly described as “brilliant”, “hard-working”, “confident”, “intellectually strong”, and, perhaps most importantly of all, “a man of integrity” (for more on Stott’s life and legacy, see Christianity Today’s wonderful eulogy).

Chris Wright, the Langham Partnership International Director (appointed to the position by Stott), offers perhaps the best summary of Stott’s legacy:

His leadership of the evangelical movement, both in the Anglican Communion and in wider inter-denominational settings, was a major factor in moving it from rather narrow-minded fundamentalism after the Second World War, to the fastest growing part of world Christianity that it is today… His books have challenged and nourished millions of Christians into a balanced and thinking biblical faith.

Stott wrote about his views on evolution, which in many ways paralleled those of BioLogos. Here is an excerpt from his 1999 book Understanding the Bible:

“What may we say about the ‘how’ of God’s creative activity. Not many Christians today find it necessary to defend the concept of a literal six-day creation, for the text does not demand it, and scientific discovery appears to contradict it. The biblical text presents itself not as a scientific treatise but as a highly stylized literary statement (deliberately framed in three pairs, the fourth “day” corresponding to the first, the fifth to the second, and the sixth to the third). Moreover, the geological evidence for a gradual development over thousands of millions of years seems conclusive. …”

“It is most unfortunate that some who debate this issue (evolution) begin by assuming that the words “creation” and “evolution” are mutually exclusive. If everything has come into existence through evolution, they say, then biblical creation has been disproved, whereas if God has created all things, then evolution must be false. It is, rather, this naïve alternative which is false. It presupposes a very narrow definition of the two terms, both of which in fact have a wide range of meanings, and both of which are being freshly discussed today…”

“I myself believe in the historicity of Adam and Eve, as the original couple from whom the human race is descended*….But my acceptance of Adam and Eve as historical is not incompatible with my belief that several forms of pre-Adamic ‘hominid’ may have existed for thousands of years previously. These hominids began to advance culturally. They made their cave drawings and buried their dead. It is conceivable that God created Adam out of one of them. You may call them homo erectus. I think you may even call some of them homo sapiens, for these are arbitrary scientific names. But Adam was the first homo divinus, if I may coin a phrase, the first man to whom may be given the Biblical designation ‘made in the image of God’. Precisely what the divine likeness was, which was stamped upon him, we do not know, for Scripture nowhere tells us. But Scripture seems to suggest that it includes rational, moral, social, and spiritual faculties which make man unlike all other creatures and like God the creator, and on account of which he was given ‘dominion’ over the lower creation.” (John Stott [1999], Understanding the Bible: Expanded Edition; 54-56)

* Please note that in this regard, Stott’s view runs contrary to current scientific consensus and the BioLogos position. Although Adam and Eve may have been historical, the data indicate very clearly that there was never a time when there were just two human beings that gave rise genetically to all human beings on earth.

My name is Ryan Pettey, and I am a documentary filmmaker who has been amazingly blessed to work on a feature-length documentary over the last year and a half called From the Dust.

With From the Dust, we wanted to put something proactive on the table that could help motivate an elevated conversation about the “war” between science and faith. It was our goal to help Christians see (and accept) the complexity of the issues raised by modern science, as well as help them to courageously engage with the theological conversations happening within the sphere of Christian culture today. We wanted the film to address the topic hermeneutically, historically, and socially in order to gain a better perspective on the issues, and, hopefully, address some of the fears (justified or otherwise) concerning what science is telling us about our physical origins.

Personally, this project has been a spiritual shot in the arm and has whole-heartedly reignited my walk with God. I have been truly humbled by my opportunity to speak with so many incredible theologians, scientists, biblical scholars, and authors. As a result of this project, the book of Genesis has become more alive and more dynamic than I had ever allowed it to be. It is my hope that this film will both challenge and inspire people of faith, no matter where they are on their journey, to revere the complexity of God both through his word and his creation.

Through the BioLogos Forum, I will be posting a few short, topic driven clips from the film in the coming weeks as conversation starters.

This first clip titled “Evolutionary Creationism” poses these particularly important questions to the Evangelical Christian community:

1. John Polkinghorne says, “The doctrine of creation is not about how things began, it’s about why things exist.” What does this mean?

2. Is it reasonable that God’s method of creation would be an unfolding process such as evolution? In other words, does an evolutionary process uphold God’s character as revealed in the scriptures? If so, how?

Thanks for watching!

Ryan Pettey
Director
From the Dust

Editor's Note: The full documentary is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. You can order the film here, and learn more about the project here.

“Evolutionary Creation” Transcript

Dr. John Polkinghorne: “The doctrine of creation isn’t about how things began, it’s about why things exist, what holds the world in being. The Christian belief is that it is the will of God that holds the world in being.”

Dr. Jeff Schloss: “No matter how you think the creation began and the process of the emergence of life occurred, if you are a Christian, you believe that God is mightily hands on.”

Dr. Alister McGrath: “And when I stopped being an atheist and became a Christian instead, actually I found that that conversion really brought a new intellectual and spiritual depth to my scientific research. I studied the philosophy of science and began to realize that proof in science was much more complex than I had realized, and above all, I began to realize that the scientific narrative actually pointed to a deeper narrative, which is that of God himself.”

Dr. Jeff Schloss: “The scriptures make it very plain that while God does marvels, miraculous marvels, he embeds these marvels in a historical process.”

Reverend Dr. Lincoln Harvey: “I have heard theologians talk about the account in Genesis in a way in which, however you read the days, whether you read them literally, or allegorically, or however you read them, they do suggest something of God taking time.”

Dr. Jeff Schloss: “Well, why does God use history to achieve his purposes? Why not just have created everything right to begin with? And then, if it were made wrong at a point in time by Adam and Eve falling, why not just have Christ die right there in the Garden and have salvation? Why wait thousands of years for the revelation of Christ? And we don’t get to have the answer to that.”

Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorne: “That shows us that God is patient and subtle, that God is prepared to create through process, unfolding process, rather than through just divine magic decree.”

Dr. Jeff Schloss: “If you believe that every kind of living organism was supernaturally created by God, then, in one sense, every organism is unique, and the cheetah is the fastest organism, and the redwood tree is the largest organism, and they are all specially and supernaturally and distinctly created by God; they are all unique. If you believe in common descent and believe in evolutionary theory, then there is a sense in which no organisms are unique to the extent that they can be explained by the common mechanism of mutation and selection. When we look at human beings, human beings do things that, as of yet, are actually not adequately explainable by the common mechanism of genetic mutation and natural selection.”

Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd: “What Mother Teresa did on the streets of Calcutta is not evolutionary useful. It is taking limited resources and giving them to people who are dying. That is not, from a survival point of view, useful. And yet, most of us think, that it’s a rather good thing.”

Dr. Jeff Schloss: “This is not a God-of-the-Gaps argument attempting to prove that there is a miracle or supernatural causes at work—that actually might be the case. But it might also be the case that there are natural causes at work, designed by God, not operating in other organisms, unique to human beings. Right now, evolutionary theory actually gives content to and illuminates the reality of human uniqueness. E.O. Wilson says that this capacity that humans have for unusual degrees of cooperative sacrifice is the culminating mystery of all biology.”

Dr. Richard Colling: “So when we talk about evolution, it is really not a matter of death and destruction imposed upon humanity and all forms of life. Evolution, from a geneticist standpoint, is really a game about probability and potential and hope and possibilities—the same thing that the New Testament says that Christians should be all about.”

Dr. Kerry Fulcher: “In Colossians, it tells us that in him all things hold together. I think God’s creation is continuing to unfold. As it continues to unfold and as we have new species that are being generated, that is not in absence of God’s creative power. Creation is not this one time deal in the past, but God is intricately involved now.”

Dr. Jeff Schloss: “There is a fabulous and profound thematic continuity to the history of life: for example, the transition from primitive prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells, the transition from single cells to multi-cells, the transition from asexual, basically clonally individually reproducing organisms, to sexually reproducing organisms that have to do it together, the transition from individual to social organisms. Well, there is really no other way to put this, it is progressive. It is exactly what we would expect if a God, who we already believe on the basis of the sacred history of redemption described in scripture, is also involved in incrementally achieving his purposes over the entire course of history.”

Reverend Dr. John Polkinghorne: “And when you come to think about it…if the nature of God is love, as Christians believe, then I think that is the way you would expect the God of love to create, not through just brute power, but by the unfolding of fruitful potentiality.”

Dr. Darrel Falk: “If people think because of scientific evidence, ‘my Christian faith doesn’t stake up anymore’—that day needs to end. All of the richness in life that I know is because of my relationship with God, and so I don’t want people to miss out on that. I don’t want people abandoning the faith because they find out that evolution is really real. It is God’s truth. So here we have this segment, this all-important segment of God’s people, who are out of touch with God’s reality. I mean, it is God’s universe! This natural world is God’s creation—and so the people, who especially need to be in touch with God’s reality, are off in a corner.”

The dominant—and generally acclaimed orthodox—view of divine creation is that Genesis chapter one depicts God as creating ex nihilo—out of nothing. Indeed, this has long been the dominant stance among Christian theologians. Yet, recently, the theologian Catherine Keller has argued forcefully against this view in her book Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. Her goal is to deconstruct ex nihilo theology and return to what she terms the “forgotten chaos.” Writing as a feminist theologian, she claims that the ex nihilo account is a highly masculine one. In its place, Keller suggests a theology of becoming in which we rethink the very notion of beginning. In this respect, she is indebted to Edward Said, who distinguishes between “beginning” and “origin.” Whereas beginnings are “secular, humanly produced and ceaselessly re-examined,” origins are “divine, mythical and privileged.”¹ To quote Keller, “what if we begin instead to read the Word from the vantage point of its own fecund multiplicity, its flux into flesh, its overflow?”²

Why is this issue so important? The German theologian Gerhard May is certainly right when he states: “church theology wants through the proposition creatio ex nihilo to express and safeguard the omnipotence and freedom of God acting in history.”³ At issue, then, are power and freedom. The God who can create ex nihilo is simply more powerful and free than the God who merely creates from that which already exists. How we interpret the first few verses of the book of Genesis depends very much upon what kind of God we think is being depicted here, and we are tempted to conclude that a truly powerful God has no need of existent matter.

But consider these opening verses from the book of Genesis:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day (Gen. 1:1-5, NRSV).

What exactly is God doing here? Further, what is this “beginning” [re’sit] and where does it begin? One can say this is a basic question regarding any kind of genesis: at what point can we say that something begins?

It is significant that the OED defines “genesis” as “the action of building up from simple or basic elements to more complex ones.”⁴ For something like that seems to be described here. The earth is described as “a formless void” and “darkness covered the face of the deep” [tohu vabohu, or “the depth in the dark”]. And then God creates [bara]. On this account, things are already “in medias res”—or “into the middle of affairs.” That is, there is already something going on and then God enters the picture. This is not to say that God was not “before all things,” only that that is not the point at which Genesis begins to tell the story. Here I want to consider the implications of these views for how we think of artistic creation: for it seems to me that our views regarding divine creation have affected the ways in which we think about how artists create. Conversely, perhaps we may also look to human creative practices to help us rethink some of God’s methods, patterns and intentions for His creation.

We might say that, historically, images of the artist’s work have alternated between something more like ex nihilo creation and something more like “out of something” accounts. On the one hand, Immanuel Kant gives us a picture of the artistic genius that sounds very much like the ex nihilo creator. According to Kant, “genius is a talent for producing something for which no determinate rule can be given . . . . hence the foremost property of genius must be originality.”⁵ You might say that the “rules” don’t apply to the genius, meaning that the Kantian artist is likewise free.⁶ As Kant puts it, “on this point everyone agrees: that genius must be considered the very opposite of a spirit of imitation.”⁷

Kant’s concept of genius gets even more interesting when he claims that “if an author owes a product to his genius, he himself does not know how he came by the ideas for it.”⁸ This clearly separates the genius artist from the scientist, at least for Kant. Whereas the genius artist has absolutely no idea of how she came up with her ideas, says Kant, a scientist like Newton can explain each of the steps that led him to his theory. So creating for the genius is a kind of mysterious process that even she does not understand, unlike Bach’s view in which it can be explained by the techniques of a craftsman who’s at the top of his game. To sum up Kant’s account: 1) true geniuses are original, 2) what they create is exemplary for everyone else, and 3) they are unable to explain how they created their masterpieces. Here we have a conception of the artist that is remarkably like that of the God who creates ex nihilo—an artist who is both powerful and free.

On the other hand, in contrast to Kant, we could posit what we might term creatio ex improvisatio—creation out of improvisation. Of course, on either view we can say that God is an improviser. For creation—however we define it—is precisely God setting in motion a reality of “ceaseless alterations” (to cite the theologian John Milbank).⁹ Thus, the very being of life is improvisatory—by which I mean that it is a mixture of both structure and contingency, of regularity and unpredictability, of constraint and possibility. Further, if God is indeed still at work in the world, then God is likewise part of that improvisatory movement. Living in such a reality means that we take part in that improvisatory movement in all that we do.

So how would this view of God translate into an account of artistic creation? If we take creatio ex improvisatio seriously, then artistic genesis always begins somewhere. Consider the following example. It was at a baseball game, when someone handed him a pair of binoculars, that Andrew Stanton suddenly got the idea for what the character WALL-E should look like. He spent the entire next inning looking at the binoculars backwards, twisting them this way and that to simulate various expressions of sadness and joy. Stanton, the director of the film WALL-E, had been thinking for years about the idea of lone robot left to clean up an uninhabitable earth, but it was only in that moment that he figured out how the animated robot should look.

Many artists will instinctively resonate with the process that Stanton went through. Some ideas come in a moment, but many aspects have to be worked out over days, weeks, months—even years. And those ideas don’t usually come by being isolated but by being connected: with other artists, the history of art, friends who inspire you, and the world of everyday life. Often what happens is that you see something—perhaps as mundane as a pair of binoculars—and you suddenly realize how it could be painted or reworked into something that’s both similar and different.

Such a conception of artistic creation is strikingly at odds with that of Kant. Yet I think it much better approximates how artistic production actually works. It is Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who (in)famously insists that “life itself is essentially a process of appropriating . . . . ‘Exploitation’ does not belong to a corrupted or imperfect, primitive society: it belongs to the essence of being alive.”¹⁰ Certainly all art making is essentially appropriation. Indeed, it is so basic to artistic improvisation that the novelist Margaret Drabble (1939- ) boldly admits that “appropriation is what novelists do. Whatever we write is, knowingly or unknowingly, a borrowing. Nothing comes from nowhere.”¹¹

The question, then, is simply: how much does any given piece of art depend upon another?

The answer is: it all depends. For appropriation and dependency represent a rather wide spectrum that has representatives all along the way. It shouldn’t be difficult to see that defining the role artists in terms of improvisation changes pretty much everything. If artists are indebted to one another, there can be no “lone” genius, disconnected from the community. Instead, we are all improvisers together, quoting one another, saying the same thing in different ways, and giving different perspectives on the same things. There is an ever-shifting balance between quotation and originality, between old and new, between you and me. Some of what I say is more “mine”; some is more “yours’; some is more “tradition.” Getting the exact ownership right may be only possible to a certain extent.

So how might this improvisatory understanding of human artistic creation give us insight into the way God created and continues to create? It may suggest that while God’s agency is not limited, God has nevertheless chosen to share that agency with the creation itself, including—in a particular but not exclusive way—the humans who bear His image. Along with God’s sovereignty, another point of the Genesis account seems to be about abundance, fruitfulness, interrelations and creative community (even Keller’s “fecund multiplicity”), rather than who gets a “divine copyright” on this or that species, or kind. And finally, reading the first chapters of Genesis as improvisation rather than ex nihilo creation might also help us newly recognize the presence of Christ in the text, as it prefigures both the way Jesus laid aside the power that was His alone by right of being God, and the way He imparted His freedom to the Church in its commission to carry on the re-creation of the world through the Spirit.

Notes

1. Edward Said, Beginnings: Intention and Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) xii-xiii.

2. Keller, Face of the Deep 19

3. Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of “Creation out of Nothing” in Early Christian Thought, trans. A.S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994) 180.

4. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. s.v. “genesis.”

5. Critique of Judgment §46.

6. As the quotation from Kant makes clear, “genius is a talent” according to Kant. If we were to pursue this carefully defined conception of genius, then Kant’s view might be less problematic. However, elsewhere Kant speaks of the genius not as a talent but as a person (“the product of a genius . . . is an example that is meant not to be imitated, but to be followed by another genius,” Critique of Judgment §49). Moreover, I am less interested in explicating exactly what Kant thought and more on how Kant has normally been interpreted.

7. Ibid. §47. I should point out that Kant often uses phrases like “on this point everyone agrees” precisely when he is putting forth ideas on which everyone doesn’t agree.

8. Ibid. §46.

9. John Milbank, “’Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions,” in Modern Theology 7 (1991): 227.

10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) §259.

11. Margaret Drabble, The Red Queen (Orlando: Harcourt, 2004) x.

Though some may believe that moving the science/faith dialogue forward is best left to scientists, scholars, and theologians, we at BioLogos recognize that our pastors play an invaluable role in the conversation. Across the globe, pastors are helping their congregations work through difficult issues of science and faith with honesty, insight, and a gentle spirit. To this end we present an ongoing series recognizing sermons (and the pastors who give them) that are helping to promote the harmony of science and faith. Today's sermon comes from Rev. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Click above to hear an excerpt. Below, is a brief summary written by BioLogos editorial staff. The full sermon, which we highly recommend can be purchased from Redeemer’s sermon store. Finally, if you know a sermon or podcast related to science and faith that has especially spoken to you, please let us know.

Throughout the last 150 years or so, the interpretation of the creation account in Genesis 1 has been a point of contention within the Christian as well as the scientific community. Some say it is a poem or a song meant to be read in symbolic terms. Genesis 1 contains much repetition and many refrains in the text, literary devices that they strongly believe characterize poetic pieces. Others stand firm in their conviction that the text is quite literal in its description of the creative process. These advocates argue that what they perceive as the absence of traditional parallelism indicates that it is not poetry, but historical prose narrative. Still, most scientists remain skeptical of a literal reading because it contradicts the geological evidence concerning the age of the earth as well as the evidence for the manner in which life progressed on this planet. Despite one’s beliefs, Dr. Keller continues, it is necessary to remain humble and gracious as Christians. In this posture, Dr. Keller rises above these disputes as he seeks to illuminate the foundational principles of God’s creation. He poses and answers this question throughout his sermon: “So, what does the Bible teach about creation?”

Throughout Genesis 1, it is important to note that God ascribes goodness to the creation unfolding before Him at the power of His word. In Genesis 1: 11 it says, “…and God saw that it was good.” While some eastern religions describe this world as an illusion that will one day fade away, the Bible is unique in that it presents a high view of “the material goodness of creation.” Not only does his universe display his glory, but also, it speaks of the unimaginable splendor to come when all creation is transformed. In other words, it is a mere shadow of the things to come! This idea is expressed in Isaiah 25 (NASB) when the scriptures say, “The LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow…and on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples…He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces…for the LORD has spoken.” Thus, it is right that humans should take pleasure in His good work, for God has placed us here in the midst of His goodness that we might experience him through what has been made.

The sermon further highlights creation’s finiteness. This fact has significant implications according to Dr. Keller. Although it is good and meant for enjoyment, it is temporary and fleeting. With this in view, Christians need to place all their delight and security in God, the eternal One. It is right to appreciate God’s earthly blessings as long as they do not displace God from the central focus. Nature exists to direct the believer to worship God, but the believer’s deepest fulfillment should be found in the Lord, who is its ultimate source.

Furthermore, it is understood from Scripture that a unity exists between the physical and spiritual realm. The natural has been infused with a divine spark. This concept that is established in the Word is revolutionary. A significant number of people would like to believe that the universe is purely material. Others hold to the Greek dualistic belief in which there is the natural and the spiritual, but the two are in opposition to one another. However, the Bible clearly states that the physical and spiritual realms are positively connected. This leads Dr. Keller to explain that both a person’s spirit and body are good, and everyone is created in the image of God. When the Fall occurred, the image was broken, but the image is there nonetheless. As he puts it, all people have been given “gifts of courage, wisdom, [and] creativity” that reflect God’s nature.

Next, Dr. Keller goes on to point out that not only is creation good, but it is beautiful! It ministers to our souls, and speaks of our eternal God. The scriptures speak of this concept frequently. For example, in the book of Psalms, the sun and the moon and the stars are described as declaring the glory of God. In addition, Romans 1:20 states that, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made…”

Dr. Keller makes one last point. Everything in creation is accomplished through God’s mighty word. Things are brought into being and blessed by the word. However, as a result of the Fall, this benediction or divine pronouncement of goodness over humankind was replaced by the curse that sin brought upon humanity. From that moment, no person again received that spoken blessing until Jesus came in the flesh. What does this tell us about the sacrifice of our Savior on the cross? Well, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus cries out to the Father in distress at His fate. He pleads with the Father to allow the cup of wrath to pass from him, but he receives no answer from God. Then, on the cross, Jesus exclaims, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” In these moments, Jesus received upon himself the condemnation that we deserved as broken people, that all might receive once again the delight and approval of the Father. Just as life came into being through God’s word, humans were brought again to life in our spirit through Jesus, the Word of God. The divine blessing is once again warranted to sinful humans because Christ has purchased it for us by his righteous blood.

Clearly, there are treasures of divine revelation in the Genesis account that provide a richer understanding of the purpose and destiny of what has been formed. It is helpful to recognize that this account is not meant as a scientific summary with precise details of the world’s beginning, but rather a text which is intended to illuminate and reveal important principles behind the creation we know and love.

Throughout history, all civilizations and peoples have operated under the assumption of a cosmography or picture of the universe. Cosmography is a technical term that means a theory that describes and maps the main features of the heavens and the earth. A Cosmography or “cosmic geography” can be a complex picture of the universe that includes elements like astronomy, geology, and geography; and those elements can include theological implications as well. We are most familiar with the historical change that science went through from a Ptolemaic cosmography of the earth at the center of the universe (geocentrism) to a Copernican cosmography of the sun at the center of a galaxy (heliocentrism).

Some mythologies maintained that the earth was a flat disc on the back of a giant turtle; animistic cultures believe that spirits inhabit natural objects and cause them to behave in certain ways; modern westerners believe in a space-time continuum where everything is relative to its frame of reference in relation to the speed of light. Ancients tended to believe that the gods caused the weather; moderns tend to believe that impersonal physical processes cause weather. All these different beliefs are elements of a cosmography or picture of what the universe is really like and how it operates. Even though “pre-scientific” cultures like the Hebrews did not have the same notions of science that we moderns have, they still observed the world around them and made interpretations as to the structure and operations of the universe. The Bible also contains a cosmography or picture of the universe that its stories inhabit.

I have said this before, and I will say it again: I am not a scientist, I am a professional storyteller, and so my interest in Biblical cosmography comes from my study of imagery, metaphor, and story. But a picture of the cosmos certainly has a bearing on scientific notions of the way the universe is and operates. Imagination and science are not completely unconnected. I am also a Christian who believes that the Bible is the Word of God. But does this mean that the Bible will have a cosmography that agrees with modern western science? I used to believe it did. I used to believe that if the Bible was scientifically errant in anyway, then it could not be the Word of God, since God would never communicate false information to us. That would make God a liar, or so I thought.

This led to the corollary that whatever modern science has proven would have to be in accord with the Bible’s own revelation. This is called “scientific concordism.” So, if we now know that the earth is a sphere and that the universe is expanding, then Scripture would not contradict that truth. What’s more, I might even be able to find a verse that would have that truth hidden it: Behold, I thought I found it: “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…who stretches out the heavens like a curtain” (Isa. 40:22). In this scientific concordist paradigm, the Bible contains veiled scientific truths before their time in a gnostic hiddenness that is uncovered by initiates into such mysteries.

Unfortunately, this paradigm would lead to much cognitive dissonance for me as I tortured the text to fit whatever scientific theory I was trying to support at the time. First, I accepted Genesis as literally explaining material creation chronology and relegated evolutionary scientists to dishonest manipulators of facts.¹ Then I tried to find dinosaurs in the Bible by interpreting the Leviathan or Behemoth as references to ichthyosaurs and sauropods.² Then I tried to make six literal days and young chronology of Creation in Genesis square symbolically with the seriously old age of the earth.³ Then I tried to creatively reconcile the billions of years of the Big Bang with 24-hour earth-bound solar days though gravity-warped space-time.⁴

I also thought that the best interpretation of the Bible was the “plain reading” of the text. That is, any interpretation that would turn the meaning into unwarranted figurative, symbolic, allegorical or metaphorical language would be disingenuous hermeneutics. I didn’t mean obvious figurative and allegorical language like parables of talking brambles and trees (Jud. 9:7-15) or clearly poetic expressions of singing mountains and clapping trees (Isa. 55:12). I meant that when the Bible talked about the physical order and events in heaven and earth it would mean just what it said since the Creator of the cosmos would know best what was actually happening.

But something started to seriously challenge these assumptions. First, as I studied the ancient Hebrew culture and its surrounding Near Eastern background, I began to see how very different a “plain reading” of a text was to them than a “plain reading” was to me.⁵ The ancient Hebrew mind was steeped in different symbols, ideas, and language than I was. If I read a phrase like “sun, moon and stars,” my western cultural understanding, which is deeply affected by a post-Galileo, post-Enlightened, materialist science would tend to read such references in terms of the physical bodies of matter, gas, and gravity spread out over vast light years of space-time. When ancient Israelites used that phrase, they would have pictures in their minds of markers and signs (Gen. 1:14), and more personal objects like pagan gods (Deut. 4:19), heavenly beings (1 Kg. 22:19), symbolic influential leaders (Gen. 37:9), or the fall of governing powers (Isa. 13:10).⁶

An ancient Jew hearing the words leviathan and sea conjured up notions of a disordered world without Yahweh’s rule, and Yahweh’s covenant creation out of chaos.⁷ Whereas for me, hearing those words makes me think of a monster fish swimming in the ocean – or maybe Moby Dick, a symbol of man’s hubris – but primarily the physical material being of those objects. It is easier to see now that my plain reading of the text through my modern western worldview could completely miss the plain meaning that the Scripture would have to an ancient Israelite. My so-called act of “plain reading” was ironically an imposition of my own cultural bias onto the text removed by thousands of years, thousands of miles, and thousands of cultural motifs.⁸ We must seek the “plain reading” of the ancient authors and their audience, and in this way we can be “diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

Something else had always haunted me like a nagging pebble in the shoe of my mind, and that was the Galileo affair. We’ll look more at this in my next post.

Notes

1. I never believed they were all lying, but many were certainly blinded by their worldview bias. I still believe that some scientists do in fact lie, cheat, and manipulate facts and studies just as in every other discipline because they are human like everyone else and can be just as driven by political and personal agenda as everyone else. A good book that documents this is Betrayers Of The Truth: Fraud And Deceit In The Halls Of Science By Nicholas Wade William Broad (Ebury Press, 1983); Michael Fumento is a science journalist who reports on current scientific fraud and its widespread economic and political effects at www.fumento.com.
2. Scientific Creationism by Henry M. Morris (Master Books, 1974, 1985) is an example of this viewpoint.
3. Creation and Time: A Biblical and Scientific Perspective on the Creation-Date Controversy by Hugh Ross (NavPress, 1994) is an example of this viewpoint.
4. Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery Of Harmony Between Modern Science And The Bible by Gerald Schroeder (Bantam, 1990) is an example of this viewpoint.
5. The seminal book that opened the door for me to a better understanding of this ANE cultural context of the Bible was John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2006).
6. “The worship of the host of heaven [was] often set in parallelism to the worship of foreign gods (Deut 17:3; 2 Kgs 17:16; 21:3; 23:4–5; Jer 19:13; Zeph 1:4–5).” K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking and Pieter Willem van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible DDD, 2nd extensively rev. ed., 429 (Leiden; Boston; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 429.
7. Brian Godawa, “Biblical Creation and Storytelling: Cosmogony, Combat and Covenant,” The BioLogos Foundation.
8. Othmar Keel’s The Symbolism of the Biblical World (Eisenbrauns) is an encyclopedia of imagery and motifs that Israel shared with her ANE neighbors that are quite alien to our thinking.