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Facing the Challenge

Two recent books on Evolution

Darwin's anniversary in 2009 has seen a slew of books and television programmes about Evolution. Christian books have been both pro- and anti- Evolution. One of the most vociferous and high profile books in the pro- camp is Denis Alexander's 'Creation or Evolution: do we have to choose?' discussed here. This article reviews two recent titles from IVP:

Should Christians Embrace Evolution? Biblical and scientific responses

Norman C Nevin ed.

This book is a response to Denis Alexander's 'Creation or Evolution: do we have to choose?'

Like 'Darwin, Creation and the Fall' (reviewed below), this is a collection of papers by different authors. As always with this kind of book, this means that some of the chapters are much stronger than others.

Unlike 'Darwin, Creation and the Fall,' the authors of this book answer the question 'Should Christians embrace evolution?' with a resounding 'no.'

The first half of the book contains theological responses to theistic evolution; the second half contains scientific responses.

In the first half, the authors clearly identify the theological problems associated with theistic evolution, and set out why they think Denis Alexander's attempted solutions do not work.

One of the biggest theological issues is whether Adam and Eve were specific individuals, made in the image of God, and the parents of the whole human race. New Testament passages such as Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 seem to require this.

Another major issue is whether the Fall was a real historical event. If you say that it was not, it seems inescapable that God created a world in which suffering and death were normal - in fact, they were the mechanism by which God created us.

In the second half of the book, the authors set out to demonstrate that the scientific evidence in support of evolution is not as conclusive as theistic evolutionists would have us believe.

One problem in the current debate is that theologians who are not theistic evolutionists often seem to look at the scientific evidence for evolution, and say 'so much the worse for science.' Yet there is a large amount of scientific evidence, for example in the field of genetics. Meanwhile, scientists who are theistic evolutionists often seem to fudge the theological problems raised by theistic evolution. Neither of these approaches will do. We cannot ignore what the Bible says about human nature and the origins of sin, death and suffering. Neither can we ignore the scientific evidence that does not fit in with how we understand this. As it stands at the moment, this debate leaves me with more questions than answers.

If you want to get up to speed on the current state of the debate over theistic evolution, I recommend reading both 'Creation or Evolution' by Denis Alexander and 'Should Christians Embrace Evolution,' edited by Norman C Nevin.

The Chapters:

Foreword by Wayne Grudem

Preface by Phil Hills: a twenty-first century challenge

1. Evolution and the Church, by Alistair Donald
2. The language of Genesis, by Alistair McKitterick
3. Adam and Eve, by Michael Reeves
4. The fall and death, by Greg Haslam
5. Creation, redemption and eschatology, by David Anderson
6. The nature and character of God, by Andrew Sibley
7. Faith and creation, by R T Kendall
8. Towards a science worthy of creatures in imago Dei, by Steve Fuller
9. Interpretation of scientific evidence:
1. Homology, by Norman Nevin
2. The nature of the fossil record, by Norman Nevin
3. Chromosomal fusion and common ancestry, by Geoff Barnard
4. Information and thermodynamics, by Andy McIntosh
10. Does the genome provide evidence for common ancestry? By Geoff Barnard
11. The origin of life: scientists play dice, by John Walton

Conclusion: Should Christians embrace evolution? By Phil Hills and Norman Nevin.

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Darwin, Creation and the Fall: Theological Challenges

Edited by R J Berry and T A Noble

This book is a collection of papers by eight different authors, all given at meetings of the Christian Doctrine Study Group of the Tyndale Fellowship in July 2008.

The authors are all evangelicals who

'accept both the authority of Holy Scripture and the contemporary scientific picture of the world.'

As with any such multiple-author book, some of the papers are much stronger than others.

I came to 'Darwin, Creation and the Fall,'hoping for answers to questions such as these:

1. What does it mean for human beings to be 'made in the image of God' (Genesis 1:26)? A related question is: who was Adam? Where - if at all - does he fit into how anthroplogists understand the development of humanity?
2. How do we understand the Fall? If it was a specific historical event, where does it fit in with the scientific account of prehistory? If we say it is a metaphor for human fallen-ness, are we in danger of saying that God made us fallen in the first place - that being sinful is just part of what it means to be human?
3. How do we understand death? God told Adam 'when you eat... you will surely die.' (Genesis 2:17). On the scientific account, animals were dying physically for millions of years before the Fall, and it appears that human beings were dying too.

'Darwin, Creation and the Fall' begins promisingly enough, by saying:

'Most of the papers in this book focus not so much on the creation as a whole as on the relationship between the story of human origins told by modern science and the story of human origins and of the Fall told in Holy Scripture.'

However, my main criticism of this book is that some of it seems to be off-topic. Some of the authors seem to be riding their own hobby-horses, rather than seriously engaging with the issues implied in the title. It would have been stronger if it had been more tightly edited.

Having said this, some of the papers that are on-topic are certainly worth reading. For example, the second half of Sam Berry's paper discusses the idea that God took an existing biological human form and transformed it into humanity made in the image of God.

T A Noble looks at the doctrine of original sin and the Fall. He recognises the crucial issue. So he says,

'The major problem with the doctrine of the Fall arising in the modern era is how to cope with the difficulty of assigning it a place in history or pre-history, which Pauline doctrine seems to require. The alternative, taken by many in the light of the story of human origins established by modern science, is to reinterpret it and dispense with the idea that the Fall was an event.'

He argues that the Fall must have been an event in time, but that we no longer have any access either to it, or to the world before the Fall:

'The Fall was a real event which profoundly affected the time-space world, but is inaccessible to scientific or historical research.'

This sounds to me like avoiding the question rather than answering it, and I do not feel that he has made his case.

Henri Blocher writes about the theology of the Fall and the origin of evil. He makes the point that evil cannot be rationally explained. It is by definition irrational - something that does not fit in God's good creation. He also discusses where Adam fits into the anthropologists' account of human development.

The book's conclusions are tentative, and the authors would probably not all agree with each other. However, they seem to be saying:

1. Being made in the image of God means being made for a relationship with God, and able to relate to him. At some point God took an existing human animal, and transformed it into a being that had the capacity to relate to God. Adam was (probably) a specific individual, (maybe) living in the Neolithic.
2. The Fall was a real historical event in which the first human beings made in God's image rebelled against God.
3. The death that God promises in Genesis 2:17 is not physical death (which was already part of the natural world), but spiritual death - separation from God. (Cf Ephesians 2:1)

If you accept theistic evolution, answers like these seem to be needed. Do they do justice to what the Bible says? Or do they distort it? How you answer this question is likely to decide whether you think theistic evolution is a viable option.

Although I didn't necessarily agree with the positions taken by the authors, some parts of this book helped to move my thinking forward, and to clarify questions and issues.

The Chapters

1. Worshipping the Creator God: the doctrine of creation by David Wilkinson
2. Did Darwin dethrone humankind? by R J Berry
3. Theological Challenges faced by Darwin by Darrel R Falk
4. God and origins: interpreting the early chapters of Genesis by Richard S Hess
5. Original sin and the Fall: definitions and a proposal by T A Noble
6. Irenaeus on the Fall and original sin by A N S Lane
7. The theology of the Fall and the origins of evil by Henri Blocher
8. Blocher, original sin and evolution by Richard Mortimer

Epilogue: the sea of faith - Darwin didn't drain it dry, by R J Berry and T A Noble

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