Creation & Evolution

Theistic evolution simply affirms that God created the initial matter from nothing. He did that about 14 billion years ago. But from there, it has all been an unguided process of development. And they’ll want to acknowledge a kind of providence, but their definition of providence is very fuzzy. It’ll be something like the same providence involved in photosynthesis, something like that. But the whole process of evolution—and this is important for the theistic evolutionist—it’s an unguided process. There’s no intrusion, no intervention from God on His part. God created the matter, the original stuff, but He’s not directly the creator of living creatures. There’s no intervention to make that happen. It’s a mystery how life arose from non-life, but there’s no supernatural intervention that made that happen according to theistic evolution.

So for the beginning of humanity, for theistic evolution, there are as many as 10,000 human-like ancestors to the ancestors of the human race. It is not Adam and Eve. This is an essential point for theistic evolution: to deny that Adam and Eve were literal people from whom the rest of humanity came. That is an essential matter for them. So the options for Adam and Eve for a theistic evolutionist is that they are teaching models, allegorical figures to represent God’s relationship with humanity or something like that, but they are not to be taken at their face value. Some may say that they’re symbolic or representative figures of a community of Neolithic farmers, something like that. God created the original stuff; it has developed into life and into human life until finally there’s a human, humanity as a species of some kind, and Adam and Eve are just representative samples of that.

We surveyed briefly what theistic evolution holds. We saw that it’s a naturalistic explanation for the development of the natural order. In particular, now we’re looking at the question of humanity. It’s a naturalistic explanation for it. That is, God stands behind it in that he created the original stuff, but how it came about and evolved was a naturalistic process with no interruption or intervention from God’s side. So it’s a naturalistic explanation for it. And what comes particularly into focus, then, is the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis and the historicity, in particular, of Adam and Eve.

Now you can see with all of that, at the heart of theistic evolution is the claim that Genesis 1 to 3 is not historical. Genesis 1 to 3 is not historical. It’s figurative, it’s allegorical, however you want to say it, but it’s not factual as you read it on the face of it. So you have to reinterpret Genesis 1 to 3 other than the way you would if you just sat down and read it the first time and tried to understand what it was saying. So there are other factors. For the evolutionists, it is supposedly the scientific data that is driving them to their conclusions, and so now they have to take that to Genesis 1 to 3 and reinterpret it accordingly. So “created from the dust of the ground” does not mean created from the dust of the ground; that’s allegorical, it’s symbolical of something. So also with the creation of Eve: “created from Adam’s rib” doesn’t mean that God took out a rib and made the woman; it means something else, it’s representative of some spiritual truth.

All right, I’ve taken time to look through a lot of these just to point out that it is impossible to take the biblical writers seriously and deny the historicity of Genesis 1 to 3. You have to say that if Genesis 1 to 3 were not historical but allegorical, Paul misunderstood it, Paul taught wrong, and so did Jude, and so on it goes.

The whole Bible story of redemption builds on the creation account, Genesis 1 and 2, and then on the temptation, the fall of Adam, and the promise in Genesis 3 and verse 15. Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He’ll bruise his head… he’ll bruise your head, you’ll crush his heel.” This seed of the gospel promise that is there, the whole rest of the Bible builds on that. There we have the whole program of redemption, the whole plot for Scripture put in place there. It’s canon-wide, it’s history-long. The champion’s going to come, the seed of the woman; he’ll crush the serpent and fix the problem that Adam created for us in his sin. The whole story of the Bible and its message are at stake in the question. I’m not saying that some don’t try to have both. It’s amazing how the human mind can hold things that are incompatible. But you have to see that the story unravels if we remove the foundations in Genesis 1 to 3.

What’s essentially important for the theistic evolutionist is that Genesis 1 to 3 cannot be understood on its face value. Got to reinterpret it somehow. It’s picturesque, it’s allegorical, it’s symbolic, it’s something, but it’s not as you read it. It has to be something else. And then number two, centrally important—and this is probably the center of the debate today in the whole discussion—and that is the historicity of Adam. And with that, of course, Adam and Eve. That’s the center of the debate today. That’s determinative. If there was an original Adam and Eve, there’s no such thing as theistic evolution for humankind.

But look at verse 26: “He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.” Notice that. All of the nations made from one man. Now there’s an unmistakable reference there to Adam. It’s referring back to Genesis 1:27–28 that we have seen. And he even emphasizes it here: “every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.” He could hardly be more exhaustive. Everybody comes from Adam. That’s what Paul says. Adam’s the ancestor of every living person.

So let’s draw some conclusions from this. Number one: Adam is not one of thousands of people that God chose out to make some spiritual point in a Genesis narrative. He’s not one of thousands; he’s the first. That’s what Paul takes. There are none before him and all the rest come after him. Every human being bears his image. That’s what Paul says. The second point, then, is that all who by grace will bear the image of the man of heaven previously bore the image of the man from dust. Now this is an important point. If we are not descended from Adam, we are not eligible for the redemption in the second Adam. That’s Paul’s argument here. That in Adam, all of us have come, and now in the second Adam, we’ll be redeemed. All who bear the image of the man of heaven were ones who previously bore the image of Adam himself. Then our third point I want to draw from this: in our resurrection with Christ, our Adamic humanity will be restored. What we lost in Adam, we regain in the second Adam in Christ. In other words, then, in 1 Corinthians 15 here, the historicity of Adam, the historicity of the fall, the reality of all of humanity coming from Adam—all of that, in Paul’s estimation, is a gospel essential.

All right, Paul is saying here we’re joined to Christ and in Christ we have this great hope. Presently the created order, and we with it, is all in disarray because of a curse, because of judgment that has come upon it. He says this is not its original condition, but it was subjected to vanity. So here we have Paul saying that the present state of the created order is not its original order. That’s important because although he doesn’t mention Adam here explicitly, it is clearly his point of reference and specifically it’s Genesis 3 and Adam’s sin and the consequent judgment that came because of Adam’s sin. The present condition of this created order with all of its upheavals of nature—tornadoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, all of that—and all of our suffering, sickness and disease, the cancers and all of the rest, all of that, Paul says, is traceable back to Genesis chapter three: Adam’s sin and God’s judgment on humanity.

Now what Paul intends to do here is give a historical account for death. And he says it traces back to a man in history by the name of Adam. It’s worth noting here, I think as well, that at the beginning of this passage, Paul’s taking up the doctrine of the resurrection in all of 1 Corinthians 15. That’s his burden. And at the outset of it, he says—this is verse three and four—that this is a matter of first importance. This is a centrally important doctrine, this doctrine of resurrection. And included in his argument is the historical argument that death began at Adam. In other words, then, this discussion belongs to the gospel. It’s not just an incidental difference.

That brings us to the next point here. What’s at stake? The nature and origin of sin and guilt. Just what is sin? What is guilt and how do you explain it? Is there such a thing? What is the nature of sin? Wherein lies the guilt of sin? Guilty before whom? How do we explain it? How do we establish it? To whom are we accountable? And why? Is the fall just a symbol in Genesis 3, a symbolic teaching that humanity is just not yet perfect—it never was? Or is there a fallen condition from which we need to be redeemed? All of that’s at stake in the discussion of evolution.

There are various levels of doctrine and there are various levels of doctrinal error. Some doctrinal errors are more difficult to judge. And so, for example, we tolerate differences here on some of the details of eschatology. I understand things correctly; Pastor Greg doesn’t. Those kinds of things, there are differences in details that good Christian interpreters have differed over the years. And those things, in the end, don’t amount to a whole lot. There are other levels of doctrine that are more important. They are actually church-defining, such as, for example, the question of the subjects of baptism: who should be baptized—believers only, or believers and their children—and what does baptism do? Is it a symbol, a sign, or does it actually do something, accomplish grace? Those kinds of things define who the church is, and so although we have those on the other side of the fence, I’m glad to acknowledge that there are brothers and sisters in Christ and all of that. They’re church-defining issues that require some distinctions to be made. There are other doctrines that just amount to heresy. And if they are taught in the church, it will end up destroying the gospel. And this question of creation—where do you put that in that leveling of doctrinal importance and doctrinal significance? I’m not sure where to plug it in the three levels that I just gave you, but it is a very serious matter.

I think his point was that there are professing Christians, there are Christians who may be tempted to believe theistic evolution, but they haven’t worked their way through all of this. And so they don’t understand just how firm the biblical material is. And that could be the confusion on their part. Ryan, if that’s your point, then you are right. I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I do think we have to take that into consideration, that not everyone has sat through Sunday school and looked all through the Bible and all of these verses and said, “This is just slam dunk,” I think. It’s impossible to say that the two are compatible.

And then that brings us to what I’ve said all along, several times. What’s at stake in this discussion ultimately is the doctrine of human redemption. Romans 5 is most explicit on that. 1 Corinthians 15, very explicit on that. The whole notion throughout the New Testament is the unity of the redeemed in Christ. We stand in Christ the second Adam, and it presupposes a previous common existence in Adam and now in the second Adam. And by the way, evolutionists—theistic evolutionists who claim to be believers, claim to be evangelicals—will acknowledge this: that the Bible story depends on, and the gospel story depends on, a reading of Genesis as we have.

We begin with Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That the world came about instantaneously and with all of its complexities and all of its intricacies by naturalistic processes—that is denied in the first breath of Scripture. What we have is an affirmation that all of it came about by the will and the Word of God. He spoke and it came into being. And so the anti-supernaturalism, the naturalism that is assumed in virtually all of science today, is denied outright in the first statement of Scripture. Or to put it another way, the supernaturalism that modern science dismisses is assumed in the first breath of Scripture. The Bible tells us very plainly, and as we saw a couple of weeks ago, it repeats it over and over and affirms it over and over again throughout the scriptures, that all that is came about specifically by the will and the spoken word of a sovereign creator. So the Bible, from the very beginning, puts us at odds with Darwinianism and its idea of random, unguided, natural selection, and we have it as the purposeful creation of God, making a world to accomplish his own purposes in it.

Let’s start with a definition of evolution. Keep in mind evolution is not just change. Evolution is upward change, progressive change. That’s essential to the very definition of what evolution is. So evolution involves change, yes, but it’s an upward, progressive change from disorder to order, from non-life to life, from simple life to complex life, from invertebrates to vertebrates, from sea creatures to land mammals, from one—to use the language of Genesis—one kind of creature to another kind of living creature, from reptiles to mammals, finally to man. And all of that—and this is very important to evolution, it’s essential to evolution—all of that by purely naturalistic processes. So evolution is a progressive upward change in all of these ways from one category to another, and that through naturalistic, unguided, purposeless procedures and changes.

Bottom line: Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, explains everything. Everything. It accounts for everything. It accounts for scientific endeavor. It accounts for the origin of life. It accounts for the origin of matter. It accounts for the origin of consciousness and self-awareness and personality. Evolution creates logical problems. It creates, it labors against the evidence. And I’m convinced it’s driven, as some of these quotes that I’ve given you acknowledge, it’s driven by not just a naturalistic presupposition, but behind that, a bias against God. And I think it’s a perfect example of Romans chapter 1, the human heart suppressing the truth. We have it more today, not just in terms of creation, but we have it in terms of denying a male is a male and a female is a female, and it goes on and on. The demonstration of the rebellion of the human heart.

Evolution, by the very definition of it, by its very nature, cannot address the question of origins. Evolution, by very definition, means change. It presumes the existence of material. So how do you explain the origins of that material? Evolution cannot touch that question. The very nature of evolution is that it deals with existing material. Our question here is where did that material come from? Now the Big Bang theory is the current dominant scientific model for origins, 13 or 14 billion years ago. And so we have a right to ask, “What is it that banged? What is it that exploded in the Big Bang? What is it that exploded to give us all that we have?” No one today affirms the eternity of matter. Older scientists would do that for some time. We don’t affirm that today. No one does that today since the Hubble telescope confirmed that the universe is expanding. It’s expanding. It must have had a beginning back there somewhere, and something exploded, so that’s the basis for all of this. Nobody is affirming the eternity of matter anymore, so we have to ask, where did this stuff come from, this stuff that exploded?

Let’s say we assume that God is the creator. And we have 99% the same DNA as a chimp. How do we account for it? We account for it by saying there’s a common fundamental design. There’s a common designer and a common design. And on that model, we easily account for all of the similarities, and we account for all of the differences. The commonalities are no problem at all. We have a common design. We have a common designer. In fact, we have a statement of that in Genesis chapter 2 and verse 7: God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature. He’d made living creatures in Genesis 1. Now he makes another living creature. You’d expect the same. You’d expect much of the same. But now how do you account for the differences between the human and the chimp? And again, we have the points to the role of presuppositions. Even if the DNA similarity were 99% across the board, which it is not, the differences are not left to be explained simply by so much chemistry, unless you have that interpretive grid already in place. On an evolutionary model, we are all so much the same chemistry because we have evolved one from the other. But on a biblical model, humanity’s distinctiveness lies in the fact that we are created in the image of God. There’s a difference. We’re made a living creature; there’s going to be similarity. We’re made in the image of God; there’s going to be a difference.

The problem with that—and we’ll see this in the video—there is the only place, the only place in the world where the evolutionary tree of life exists is in the textbooks. The only place. All we have to look at is we can picture this evolutionary tree of life with all of its branches working out. All we have is if you take the tree and cut it off right here and we have it up from here up. That’s all we have to look at. And that’s just what you would predict from Genesis. God created after their kinds. That’s a problem for evolution. They can’t account for—they have this evolutionary tree of life that they presuppose, but they can’t demonstrate it in the fossil record. There are no transitional forms. The fossil record is just no help whatever for evolution. The fossil record demonstrates every time that creation was after its kind. We have its different kinds. Transitional forms don’t exist.

And what we should note as Christians in all of this discussion is that in both of those volumes, in General Revelation and in Special Revelation, God speaks. And in both of those volumes, God speaks infallibly. Truthfully. In general revelation and in special revelation, just as truthful, just as authoritative, all of truth is God’s truth. There’s a consistency of general revelation and special revelation. It coheres together. We expect that because it comes from the same God. Where general revelation speaks clearly, we’re happy to follow that, and we should follow David and praise God in it as a matter of praise. Science and faith are not opposed.

That brings to the next point, and that is that where science and the Bible conflict, where scientists and their findings conflict with the Bible, one interpretation of the data, or the other, is wrong. Either the scientist is interpreting the data of general revelation incorrectly, or the biblical interpreter, the theologian, is interpreting the biblical data wrongly. We’ve seen that happen in history. Calvin believed that the world was flat. It was a scandal that Galileo would say otherwise. We had to readjust that. It’s possible that either side has been demonstrated in history. Either side can be mistaken in interpreting the data. That’s the problem. It’s not that the Bible and science are in conflict. The problem is that interpreters are fallible.

And that brings me to my second observation. These two volumes, General Revelation and Special Revelation, do not speak with equal clarity. Both are infallible. Both are truthful. They do not speak with equal clarity. Special revelation is called “special revelation” for a reason. It’s more clear. And so what we say then is that the Bible is the final authority. Where the Bible speaks clearly, we can be confident. The Bible is infallible. We are not. Our interpretations can be wrong. We need to be humble in that. At the end of the day, we have to see that the Bible speaks more clearly than any scientist interpreting general revelation.

In fact, those on both sides of the evolution question who might like to claim him will find him somewhat of a disappointment, even if for different reasons. That is, he spoke with obvious openness to the possibility of evolution if it could be established with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty; however, throughout his career he remained skeptical on exactly this score, often even mocking the theory’s speculative nature and lack of supporting evidence. Warfield maintained an obvious interest in the subject throughout his life, and through to the end his writings reflect both his openness and his critical suspicion regarding the theory. At the end of it all we must conclude that although Warfield allowed for the possibility of evolution he himself remained uncommitted to it, and he clearly rejected most of the main components of theistic evolution as it is understood today.

One of the reasons that people have thought that is a quote from Warfield has floated, and it’s floated out of context. He made the statement once that when he entered Princeton, he was already an evolutionist or a Darwinian of the purest water. That was his quote. And that is lifted out and used to color his entire career. The quote, though, was in reference to his entering Princeton College, the College of New Jersey at the time, in 1868. He was 16, 17 years old when he entered the college. And in that same article where he mentions that, he also mentions that he had abandoned the theory by the time he was in his early 30s. And by that time, he had come under the influence of Charles Hodge.

We may say this in summary: Warfield seemed very open to evolution and spoke allowingly of it. Warfield at the same time was very critical of evolution, questioned its scientific grounding, mocked its speculative character and logical fallacies, and recognized the biblical obstacles to it. Indeed, his last assessment of evolutionary theories is sharply critical. It would be impossible to identify any specific evolutionary theory that Warfield allegedly held. Warfield did not hold to the essentials of any theistic evolutionary theory held today (as enumerated in Grudem’s twelve points above). Warfield asserted in 1916 that he had left theistic evolution behind him years earlier. There, it seems, we must leave it also.