First Response to Robert C. Newman
Pattle P. T. Pun
An Outline
To delineate the theological system of Progressive Creationism, I have developed five theological themes. First, as pointed out by Calvin, God's general revelation through nature (a valid though incomplete avenue of knowing God) complements God's special revelation through Scripture. Secondly, in contrast to Deism's notion of an absentee Creator, the Christian Theism propounded by Calvin sees God both as Creator and as immanent Governor and Preserver, upholding the world by his providential control. Thirdly, a proper methodology in Biblical hermeneutics must be both historical and theological, embracing both testaments. Fourthly, physical death evidently existed before man's Fall, since man's dominion in the created world implies his control of the reproductive pattern of non-human life forms, and the presence of the food chain necessitates the physical death of the things eaten. If God utilized death to maintain life, he could have employed natural selection (among other processes) to bring forth the varieties of life forms in his creation. Fifthly, the creation was good, and it was the Fall which brought about the defective functioning of the food chain and the removal of God's special sustenance which previously kept man immortal. Besides physical death, evil also entered the human race so that mankind and the creation needed to be reconciled to God through the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ.
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On examination, current conservative positions on the issues of creation and evolution all have strengths and weaknesses. While "literal" in its interpretation of Genesis, Recent Creationism belittles the vast amount of scientific evidence for natural selection and the antiquity of the earth. It also has deistic implications in maintaining the relative fixity of biological varieties. Though theistic evolutionists have a more holistic outlook regarding God's immanence in nature, their figurative interpretation of the creation account in Genesis denies its historicity and has difficulties in explaining the origin of sin and evil, whether they postulate the conscious rebellion of two uniquely evolving hominids or suggest that a spiritual fall antedated the creation. Finally, while affirming the existential realities of evil and the need for Christ's redemption, theistic evolutionists also drive a wedge between spiritual truths and historical truths of the Bible, contrary to the unity of God's revelation.
If Theistic Evolutionism and Recent Creationism are on the left and the right wing of the evangelical spectrum respectively, Progressive Creationism strives to be in the middle by utilizing the strengths of these positions and avoiding their weaknesses.
A definition of Progressive Creationism:
"In Genesis one, the pattern is development from vacancy to the finished creation at the end of the sixth day. In manufacturing, the pattern is from raw materials to finished products. In art the pattern is from unformed materials to artistic creation. In life the pattern is from the undifferentiated ovum to the adult. In character the pattern is from random and uncritical behaviour to disciplined and moral behaviour."1
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Dr. Newman has focused our attention on the apparent conflict between modern science and the evangelical faith. The debate on creation / evolution between theologians and scientists has led to a polarization between those who cherish the literal interpretation of the Scripture at the expense of the validity of scientific explanation and others who accept the evolutionary paradigm without seriously examining its implication for the foundation of the Christian doctrine of original sin. It has been recognized that microevolution is well documented scientifically while macroevolution remains speculative.2 I now attempt to present a theological system that utilizes the strengths and avoids the weaknesses of these positions in the debate in a perspective known as Progressive Creationism. Dr. Newman's "Old-Earth Creationism" in many ways is similar to this position. I will define Progressive Creationism through the development of five theological themes, given below:
Unity of God's Revelation in Nature and in Scripture
John Calvin's monumental treatise on the Institutes of the Christian Religion was based on the two-fold revelation of God: The knowledge of God the Creator and the knowledge of God the Redeemer.3 For him God's general revelation through nature and God's special revelation through Scripture are complementary and necessary for men to have a saving knowledge of the Creator and the Redeemer. However, Calvin does not espouse a natural theology that holds that man can come to know God through general revelation apart from special revelation. He stresses the importance of Scripture as a guide and teacher for anyone who would come to God the Creator. But Calvin has definitely departed
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from the medieval mindset which condemns science, and according to which the church views science to be contrary to the Scripture, as exemplified by the Copernican controversy over heliocentricity. Calvin never suggests that we should interpret God's creation from the Scripture alone. He shows great respect for the natural scientists who, by their close observation of nature, can bring us better understanding of God the Creator. In other words, Calvin maintains that general revelation of God through nature is a valid though incomplete avenue of knowing him. Because of man's depravity, he fails to know and worship God the Creator. With the aid of the Holy Spirit, Scripture reveals to man the knowledge of God the Creator more intimately and vividly.
Immanence of God in His Providential Control over His creation
Calvin also has a holistic view of God's involvement in His creation, whereas popular deism glorifies reason instead of revelation. Calvin has presented to us a worldview that is most consistent with God's revelation.4 It is based on the assumption that the world and the universe were created by the Creator who sustains them by providence. The creation exists moment by moment only by the direct sustenance of God the Creator. Both the creation and the Creator are part of an external reality rather than an illusion in the mind of man. The deistic implication of Recent Creationism suggests that God's involvement with his creation consists only of miraculous intervention. However, in the context of the Scripture there is no distinction between supernatural or natural if we see his sustaining power in all things. A miracle is an extraordinary event which is accomplished by God as a sign of
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some purpose of his own. God is equally involved in his providential control in allowing the probabilities determined by natural processes to work for His purposes.
Scripture in General and Genesis in
particular:
A Historical-Theological Interpretation
Calvin emphasizes the importance of learning from both the Old Testament and the New Testament in concert. God unfolds more and more concerning himself and his will for humanity in the course of Biblical history. The theological center of the Old Testament as revealed in the New Testament in the testimony of Christ, the Messiah (John 5:39). Therefore, a unifying concept has to be constructed in the context of both the Old and the New Testaments since the two Testaments are mutually interpretive. The methodology in Biblical hermeneutics must be a historical-theological one. Hasel summarizes this method succinctly:
...the Biblical theologian . . . must claim as his task both to discover and describe what the text meant and also to explicate what it means for today.5
The unifying principle throughout the Old Testament seems to be the self-revelation of God through the nation of Israel. The book of Genesis by definition is the book of beginning. It centers on the beginning of the chosen nation of Israel through whom God is to reveal himself to the world. Genesis traces the origin of man's rebellion from God and how God chose Abraham through whom the people of the earth will be blessed. The rest of the book is devoted to the preparation of Israel, tracing her history through the lives of the patriarchs. God's sovereignty in the midst of the rebellion of man is stressed throughout the book.
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Natural Selection as One of the Processes
Utilized by God in His Creative Activities
Fred Van Dyke questions the validity of viewing natural selection, which depends on resource scarcity, competition, differential survival and reproduction, as a creative mechanism employed by a benevolent God before the fall of man.6 Before attempting to address this charge, one has to clarify several factors, discussed below:
1. One has to question the extent to which we can impose human emotion or volition onto the non-human world. When Paul mentions the creation groaning in travail, awaiting its deliverance from the bondage to decay when the sons of God are revealed (Romans 8:19-22), he apparently is using metaphoric language to describe the solidarity of man with the creation. The redemption of the natural world from evil and decay is a corollary of the redemption of the body of man which has been condemned as a result of sin. Paul does not mean to teach that the non-human world has a will of its own which can turn back to God by faith in order to be saved (Ephesians 2:8). Scientific studies on the volition of animals are inconclusive.
2. Adam and Eve were admonished to multiply and subdue the earth, and have dominion over the animal world before the Fall (Genesis 1:28). This command seems to involve man's control over the reproduction of other creatures and their utilization of the natural resources. Death is probably one of the ways to control population growth. In addition, the word "subdue" seems to mean more than to reign over. It seems to mean "conquer and subject." The same word is used in contexts of conquest in the face of opposition (i.e. Zech. 9:15; Josh. 18:1; 2 Sam. 8:11 etc.). It seems
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that some principle was already at work in the earth to which man was introduced in order to conquer it for God. The Bible is silent about the source of this principle. It may have been "Satan" in the form of the serpent which is assumed in Genesis 3. However, God's sovereignty seems to have overruled this principle since the creation was good (Gen. 1:31).
3. Man is described in one of his original relationships to the rest of creation as being an eater. Other life forms are also introduced as part of a food chain (Genesis 1:29-30). It seems that there is no compelling reason to justify the claim that animal killing is permitted only after the Fall. Genesis does not provide a theological ground to differentiate between the nature of vegetarian and animal life. Biologically, the modern understanding of the cell theory and the genetic basis of life has unified the living world. Moreover, the fossil record of life seems to suggest the presence of carnivorosity long before man's appearance. Therefore, it seems necessary to postulate the existence of physical death in the non-human world to account for the food chain before the human fall.
The understanding of these presuppositions seems to lead to the conclusion that physical death was present in the creation before the Fall. Since God utilized death to maintain life, natural selection, which is based on differential fecundity and mortality, could very possibly be one of the processes God employs to bring forth the varieties in the living world.
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Creation was Good:
The Incarnation was Necessitated by the Fall of
Man
The creation was good (Gen. 1:31). The creation is not the result of the fall. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies declare the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1), and "His name is majestic in all the world" (Psalm 8:9).
Calvin addresses the problem of the necessity of the Incarnation.7 God's decrees of the fall and Incarnation run together. Christ would not have had to be incarnated if Adam had not sinned, for Christ was the second Adam (1 Cor. 15:47; Romans 5:12-21). He was made like man in all respects except sin (Hebrews 4:15). He was reckoned as a descendent of Adam (Luke 3:38).
God's eternal purpose is to predestine us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ before the creation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5). All things were created by the pre-existent Christ and for him. But the necessity of Christ's Incarnation hinges on the fall of man.
As a result of human sin, the ground was cursed (Genesis 3:17). The creature is subject to frustration (Romans 8:20). Man's immortality was apparently maintained before the Fall by a special sustenance of God, perhaps through the Tree of Life. As a result of man's sin, God's special sustenance was removed (Genesis 3:24). Death and evil entered the human race. Mankind and the creation need to be reconciled to God through the Incarnation and Atonement of Christ (Col. 1:20). However, man is to be made a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), not to be restored to his pre-Fall status. Therefore, the Scriptural references such as Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25, which abolish predation, seem to be referring to the millennial kingdom or the new heaven and the new earth and cannot be used to refer to the original creation.
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Evaluation of Conservative Positions
on the Issues of Creation and Evolution
1. Fiat Creationism (or Recent Creationism)
This is the most widely published of the creationist viewpoint and has become synonymous with creationism in the popular mind. It emphasizes the "literal" interpretation of Genesis. It was the Creationists who alerted the American public to the dogmatic claim by some scientists that evolution is a fact and who went to court in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, and Texas to require the teaching of Creation science along with evolution in the public schools.8
However, the Recent Creationist position has two serious flaws. First, a vast amount of scientific evidence has been amassed to support the theory of natural selection and the antiquity of the earth, which they have denied and ridiculed.9 Secondly, much creationist writing has "deistic" implications. The stipulation that the varieties we see today in the biological world were present in the initial creation10 implies that the Creator is no longer involved in his creation in a dynamic way. The creation is seen as having been left to its own devices for the expression of the variability potentially endowed to it at the beginning. This deistic implication is contrary to Hebrews 1:3, which stipulates that all things are upheld by the word of his power.
2. Theistic Evolutionism
Theistic Evolutionists accept the historicity of the Bible, but some allegorize the Genesis account in order to treat the whole creation account as a "poetic" representation of spiritual truths of
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the human's dependence on God their Creator and their fall from God's grace by the symbolic act of disobedience. They accept the processes of organic evolution as the ways God used to create humans. They see God's providential hand behind the process of natural selection. Seen in this light , the theistic evolutionists maintain a more holistic theological position concerning God's providence than do the Recent Creationists who have to posit a repetitive divine intervention in cataclysmic proportions.
However, theistic evolutionists have to deal with two theological obstacles:
First are the exegetical problems in the Genesis account of creation. There seem to be eleven historical narratives in the first thirty-seven chapters of Genesis, each delimited by the phrase "these are the names [generations, descendants] of . . . " (Gen. 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12, 19; 36:9; 37:2). The contents are linked together to form a roughly chronological account of primeval and patriarchal life.11 Since few would doubt the historicity of the patriarchs of Israel, it seems unwarranted to assume the creation account as allegorical while the rest of these narratives are historical. The New Testament also regards certain events mentioned in Genesis 1 as actually having transpired (e.g., Mark 10:6, 1 Cor. 11:8-9). Calvin also suggests that the historical account of the six-day creation shows God's goodness towards man in lavishly preparing the world for the habitation of man, the climax of God's creation.12
The assumption that Genesis 1 represents a "wide-angle" perspective of God's creative activities and Genesis 2 gives these activities a "close-up" examination may help in our understanding of the creation account. The seemingly conflicting chronological
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sequences of the creation of plants, animals and man may be resolved by assuming an overlapping13 of the creative eras in which some of the creative activities may have been contemporaneous or, at least, overlapping. Genesis 2: 1-5 may indicate the lack of a farmer to cultivate the field instead of the chronology of the Creation of plants. Genesis 2:19 can be interpreted to mean that animals were created before Adam so that they can be brought to him for naming. Therefore, the conflicts in the chronology of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 may be more apparent than real.
In addition, the Hebrew word nephesh translated as living soul (Gen. 2:7) of man is also used to describe other living creatures in Genesis 1:20, 21 and 24. The distinction between man and beast is that man was created in the image of God and other creatures were not. Therefore, in Genesis 2:7 we see that man became a living being for the first time just as other creatures. It seems to rule out the interpretation that man is genetically derived from some previously existing living forms.
The second set of problems faced by theistic evolutionists relates to the origin of sin and evil. George Murphy proposes several solutions to this theological question from a theistic evolutionistic perspective: The first humans, the first to reach reflective consciousness and to be endowed with the image of God, consciously turned away and refused to obey the word of God.14 This position seems to have scientific and theological obstacles. Scientifically, one has to postulate that a population of pre-existing hominids acquired reflective consciousness and the image of God — for population evolves, not individuals. The mechanisms of natural selection have been shown to be deficient in explaining macroevolution. Alternate theories of neutral mutation
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and punctuated equilibrium have been postulated.15 These theories agree that gradual selective process cannot account for macroevolutionary changes. However, the random process they propose to substitute for the gradual natural selection mechanism is difficult to test with controlled experimentation.
As an exception to the evolutionary paradigm, one can postulate that God chose two of the evolving hominids to be Adam and Eve, and endowed them with the image of God. This requires an extraordinary act of God in selecting only two individuals from an evolving population of hominids. To some Progressive Creationists, the extraordinary act that God utilized to create man from the dust of the earth was as logical if not more consistent. This does not mean that we bring in God for a supernatural event when we cannot see a natural cause. The transcendent God and his extraordinary act of bringing Adam and Eve into existence does not imply "God-of-the-gaps" deism. This stipulation simply stresses the special importance that God attributes to the creation of man. God's providence does not preclude his using extraordinary acts not explainable by known natural means for a special purpose of his own. The act of creation ex nihilo itself demands a transcendent God performing an extraordinary act to put together the natural processes in his creation.
Theologically, moreover, natural selection does not explain the efficacy of the Fall which leads to man's death. The Fall was a moral predicament not necessitated by any natural processes. The unity of the human race as derived from a single source and the origin of human death and sin from a single human couple (Romans 5:12-21) necessitate the incarnation and the redemptive work of Christ. Christ is the second Adam who is to give life to the
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fallen human race through his obedience and atoning death. He is not the culmination of human evolution.
An alternative to this dilemma is to dispose of the historicity of the "unique" human couple who sinned and were banished from God's blessing and to recognize the existential nature of sin and evil and the need for redemption. This approach seems to compartmentalize reality if pressed to the extreme: that the spiritual realm and the physical realm are independent of each other. The major weakness of the existential emphasis on sin and the fall is the inconsistency of allowing God to act on a personal level through existential encounter while denying God's action in history through creation. This dualistic overtone seems to contradict the unity of God's general revelation through nature and his special revelation through the Scriptures.
Origen propounded a similar view in the early Church. He posited that there was a spiritual fall in which men's souls were also affected.16 Creation is only a testing ground revealing what has happened in the spiritual realm. Therefore, in essence, creation is the result of the Fall. Man is to be united to Christ and thus to become redeified to the pre-fall state in heaven. This leads to the manichean implication that the Creation is evil. The necessity of Christ's atoning death is also called into question. Origen's view on creation was anathematized by the early Church. This view is also contrary to the goodness of the creation (Genesis 1).
Conclusion: Progressive Creationism — A Viable Approach
Ramm defines "Progressive Creationism" in terms of development.17 Progressive Creationism can be briefly defined in our context as follows:
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(1) It posits that God is involved in his creation in a dynamic way by shaping the variation of the biological world through the mechanism such as natural selection, thus avoiding the deistic mentality of the "God-of-the-gaps" theory.
(2) It stresses the historicity of Adam and Eve and gives the creation of Adam and Eve special significance since it was an extraordinary act of God that is not explainable by known natural causes.
(3) It focuses on the unity of God's revelation in nature as well as in Scripture and tries to maintain the historical and theological integrity of the creation account.
I submit to you that this is at present the least problematic model in the evangelical response to modern science.
Second Response || Chapter 11 || Table of Contents
1. Ramm, B., The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954) p. 76.
2. Pun, P., Evolution: Nature and Scripture in Conflict? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982) 174-230. See also Denton, M., Evolution, A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda: Adler and Adler, 1986) and Taylor, G.R., The Great Evolutionary Mystery (New York: Harper and Row, 1983).
3. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, translated and indexed by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), Vol. I, Book I, Chap. V. p. 53 and Chap. XIV, 180.
4. Calvin, op. cit. Vol. I, Book I, Chap. XVI, 197-198.
5. Hasel, G., Old Testament Theology: Basic Issues in the Current Debate (Revised and Expanded third edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) 169-170.
6. Van Dyke, F. 1986, "Problems of Theistic Evolution," Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, Vol. 38, 11.
7. Calvin, op. cit. Vol. I., Book II, Chap. XXIV. 471-472.
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8. Komberg, A. in A. T. Ganesan, Shing Chang and James A. Hoch ed., Molecular Cloning and Gene Regulation in Bacilli (New York: Academic Press, 1982) xxi. Also see T. Minnery, November 7, 1980, "Creationists' Tenacity Secures Subtle Change in Science Texts," Christianity Today, 64.
9. Pun, op. cit. 191-230. See also D. Young, Creation and the Flood (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977); and D. Young, Christianity and the Age of the Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982).
10. Moore, J. and H. Slusher, ed., Biology, A Search for Order in Complexity (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977) 451-453.
11. Harrison, R.K., Introduction to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969) 548-551. See also J.O. Buswell, Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion, Vol. I, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1963) 156.
12. Calvin, op cit. Vol. I, Book I, Chap. XIV, p. 161. 17. Pun, op. cit. 262-263.
13. Pun, op. cit., 262-263.
14. Murphy, G. 1986. "A Theological Argument for Evolution," Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, Vol. 38, p. 19.
15. Pun, op. cit. 220-224.
16. Cunliffe-Jones, H., A History of Christian Doctrine (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978) 77-84.
17. Ramm, B. op. cit. 76.
