Tim Keller on Creation, Evolution, and Lay-People
While there are a number of issues that can get a group of meeting-together-Christians all-up-and-animated, even before you have the chance to say, Now it’s time for the offering, the context of this header before you, may very well trump any other!
And while, contrary to Big Al, the Polar Bears are increasing, this issue definitely, and very easily, polar-ises of the people, and when such a subject arises in discussions, everyone enters the kitchen, because it can very quickly, get’s rather… H-O-T!
This seems to be further encouraged as you can listen to any number of sound Evangelical Christian leaders-scholars-special interest groups, who also differ on this issue! Therefore, when Mr and Mrs Christian Lay-Person seek to find where to land on this issue, to understand what is acceptable, or even what is appropriate, as such is not easy terrain to navigate!
Who We Gonna Call? No, not a Ghost-Buster, but he is a Keller… Tim Keller!
In an article, which you can read in full, this is how Keller introduces the article that the header indicates…
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Many secular and many evangelical voices agree on one ‘truism’—that if you are an orthodox Christian with a high view of the authority of the Bible, you cannot believe in evolution in any form at all. New Atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins and creationist writers such as Ken Ham seem to have arrived at consensus on this, and so more and more in the general population are treating it as given. If you believe in God, you can’t believe in evolution. If you believe in evolution, you can’t believe in God.
This creates a problem for both doubters and believers. Many believers in western culture see the medical and technological advances achieved through science and are grateful for them. They have a very positive view of science. How then, can they reconcile what science seems to tell them about evolution with their traditional theological beliefs? Seekers and inquirers about Christianity can be even more perplexed. They may be drawn to many things about the Christian faith, but, they say, “I don’t see how I can believe the Bible if that means I have to reject science.”
However, there are many who question the premise that science and faith are irreconcilable. Many believe that a high view of the Bible does not demand belief in just one account of origins. They argue that we do not have to choose between an anti-science religion or an anti-religious science.1 They think that there are a variety of ways in which God could have brought about the creation of life forms and human life using evolutionary processes, and that the picture of incompatibility between orthodox faith and evolutionary biology is greatly overdrawn.2
For example, there have been a number of efforts to argue that there may be evolutionary reasons for religious belief. That is, it may be that capacity for religious belief is ‘adaptive’ or is connected to other adaptive traits, passed down from our ancestors because they supported survival and reproduction. There is no consensus about this among evolutionary biologists. Nevertheless, its very proposal seems to be completely antithetical to any belief that God is objectively real. However, Christian philosopher Peter van Inwagen asks:
Suppose that God exists and wants supernaturalistic belief to be a human universal, and sees (he would see this if it were true) that certain features would be useful for human beings to have—useful from an evolutionary point of view: conducive to survival and reproduction—would naturally have the consequence that supernaturalistic belief would be in due course a human universal. Why shouldn’t he allow those features to be the cause of the thing he wants?—rather as the human designer of a vehicle might use the waste heat from its engine to keep its passengers warm.3
Van Inwagen’s argument is sound. Even if science could prove that religious belief has a genetic component that we inherit from our ancestors, that finding is not incompatible with belief in the reality of God or even the truth of the Christian faith. There is no logical reason to preclude that God could have used evolution to predispose people to believe in God in general so that people would be able to consider true belief when they hear the gospel preached. This is just one of many places where the supposed incompatibility of orthodox faith with evolution begins to fade away under more sustained reflection.
However, many Christian laypeople remain confused because the voices arguing that Biblical orthodoxy and evolution are mutually exclusive are louder and more prominent than any others. What will it take to help Christian laypeople see greater coherence between what science tells us about creation and what the Bible teaches us about it?
[1]. A good popular level book by a scientist is Denis Alexander, aptly titled: Creation or Evolution-do we have to choose? (Oxford: Monarch Books, 2008.)
[2]. See Christian Smith, ed. The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life (University of California Press, 2003.) and Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God : how monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts, and the end of slavery (Princeton: 2003.)
[3]. Peter van Inwagen, “Explaining Belief in the Supernatural”, in J.Schloss and M.Murray, ed. The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion. (Oxford, 2009) p.136.
I will let you read the body of this article for yourself, which is some 14 pages in length, so it has some depth to its title.
However, here is how Keller concludes this piece…
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
How do we correlate the data of science with the teaching of Scripture? The simplest answer for scientists would probably be to say ‘who cares about Scripture and theology?’ but that fails to do justice to authority of the Bible, which Jesus himself took with utmost seriousness. The simplest answer for theologians would probably be to say ‘who cares about science?’ but that does not give nature its proper importance as the creation of God. Psalm 19 and Romans 1 teach that God’s glory is revealed as we study his creation, yet in the end both of those passages say that it is only Scripture which is the ‘perfect’ revelation of God’s mind (Psalm 19:7). We must interpret the book of nature by the book of God. “It cannot be said too strongly that Scripture is the perfect vehicle for God’s revelation…its bold selectiveness, like that of a great painting, is its power. To read it with one eye on any other account is to blur its image and miss its wisdom.”28
My conclusion is that Christians who are seeking to correlate Scripture and science must be a ‘bigger tent’ than either the anti-scientific religionists or the anti-religious scientists. Even though in this paper I argue for the importance of belief in a literal Adam and Eve, I have shown here that there are several ways to hold that and still believe in God using EBP [evolutionary biological processes].29
When Derek Kidner concluded his account of human origins, he said that his view was an “exploratory suggestion…only tentative, and it is a personal view. It invites correction and a better synthesis.”30 That is the right attitude for all of us working in this area.
[28]. Kidner p.31.
[29]. Denis Alexander (Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (Monarch Books, Oxford, UK, 2008) speaks of several ‘models’ by which we can relate the teaching of Genesis 2-3 with evolutionary biology. ‘Model A’ sees Genesis 2-3 as parabolic about every individual human being. (i.e. we all sin.) ‘Model B’ sees Genesis 2-3 as a figurative account of something that actually happened to a group of early human beings. ‘Model C’ sees Adam and Eve as real historical figures, but fully accepts the fact that human life came from EBP. ‘Models D’ is old earth creationism, and ‘Model E’ is young earth creationism. (See chapters 10 and 12.) Even though Alexander lists these five, I’m not sure this exhausts the possibilities. The proposal by Derek Kidner doesn’t really fit into any of Alexander’s categories.
[30]. Kidner, p.30.
That is the right attitude for all of us working in this area.
These are important words on the context of this subject matter, and for Evangelicals, while certain doctrines do divide, and while we should openly debate this issue, it should be in the context of the Gospel, and not outside this nexus… and I say these things as someone who has been reared and is more comfortable in the context of the following words by the Doctor, Logic on Fire, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, which were sourced from… HERE…
“We accept the biblical teaching with regard to creation and do not base our position upon theories of evolution, whichever particular theory people may choose to advocate…. Now someone may ask, “Why do you care about this? Is this essential to your doctrine of salvation?….”
If we say that we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, we must say that about the whole of the Bible, and when the Bible presents itself to us as history, we must accept it as history.
I would contend that the early chapters of Genesis, the first three chapters of Genesis, are given to us as history”
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, What is an Evangelical? (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1993), 74-75.
What say you?
TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE… GO HERE!
For the Fame of His Name
Man of Spin
Postscript: John Piper’s recent comments and perspective that intersects with the context of this issue is helpful. Here is what he says…
Do you accept “old earth” and evolution?
If by “accept” you mean, “Are there people on our counsel of elders who hold to the old earth theory?” then, Yes.
If by “accept” you mean, “Is that my view?” here is what I said the other day when the church staff was talking about this. We spent about an hour, talking about how we as a church should orient ourselves in the conversation about old earth and young earth, and I said that there seem to be two viable, biblical views for me. (This is going to offend a lot of people.)
One is young earth, because it seems to me that the natural reading of Genesis 1 is 24-hour days, not Day-Age.
And two, the view that John Sailhamer wrote in Genesis Unbound or in his other books, which says that all of creation happened in verses 1 and 2. It may be as old as 4 trillion years, as far as he is concerned, and what was happening in Genesis 1 each day was not the bringing into being of the earth and its various forms, but rather the ordering, managing and structuring of things. This allows for 24 hour days but also allows for an old earth.
I lean that way. I don’t believe in evolution as the way that Adam came to be a human.
You can read the full comment… HERE!
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If you read your Bible, it is very obvious that disagreement over the age of the earth (millions of years) makes havoc out of the Bible’s teaching of the historicity of Adam and Eve, and is clearly an attack on the inspiration of Scripture ( and creationists’ interpretations have nothing to do with it). Let’s take the idea that God took a 1000 years to create Adam by evolutionary processes (natural selection , mutation), you know what theistic evolutionists take out of context; namely, “a thousand years is like a day” (never mind, that the second part “and a day like a thousand years,” cancels out the first part, showing how much God can accomplish in far less time than we). If this is so-that “one day is as a 1000 years” (never mind millions of years), what happened when God created Eve–did he need a 1000 years to create her (through evolution) from adam’s rib? Moreover, did he have to wait a 1000 years before he could have fellowship with Adam and Eve, which He did? Presumably not, as Adam died at 930 years according to scripture. Yet, we have to be consistent if we are going to make sense out of the intended meaning of scripture in its biblical ,historical context. Enough of this nonsense. Supernatural Creation (ex nihilo) is diametrically opposite to evolutionary processes(development) from some ape-like creature ( and ultimately from one common ancestor over eons of time).
Moreover, the Bible tells us that Adam was created on day 6 (Genesis 1:26), that he lived through day 6 and day 7 , and died when he was 930 years old–which means the creation days could not have been millions of years. Such interpretation makes absurdity out of the plain meaning of scripture. Again, take the plain meaning of Exodus 20:8-11. God’s pattern of creation according to scripture forms the blueprint or basis for of our work week of six literal days, in which the plural Hebrew form of days used here (“yamin”) for “days” in verse 11 always refers in the Old Testament to a literal 24-day ( and that 845 times). In other words, God established a blueprint for our lives, six days of work and one day of rest, based on the same pattern as creation. How could God say it more plainly? It makes complete nonsense of the obvious meaning of scripture to have each work day equal millions/ billions of years according to the uniformitarian evolutionary time frame.
There is no “testable, repeatable, observable phenomena” on the origin of the universe. All dating methods are based on fallible assumptions , and a majority contradict the secular dates anyway. How do they know that Genesis 1 is describing multiple and/or sequential indefinite periods of time? They might get such an idea from Astronomer Hugh Ross, whose skewed and strained “progressive creationist” (billions of years) interpretation of the Genesis account of creation has been biblically, comprehensively, and scientifically ( no straw-dummy arguments I assure you) refuted with brilliant clarity by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D. in his newest and “must-read” book “Refuting Compromise”. But they certainly do not develop such a position from scripture. If death and struggle (the tooth and claw of evolution) were here eons before Adam sinned and which first brought death into the world accordind to scripture–(Romans 5:12; Genesis 3), as evolution requires, this clearly means that God’s “very good” creation (Genesis 1:31) had already been spoiled and death is not the penalty for sin , as scripture plainly declares (Romans 5:12, Genesis 3). This means that Christ’s death (for sin) and resurrection were ineffective and meaningless, and the plain biblical teaching (i.e. Romans 8; Rev. 21) of the final restoration of this fallen world to the original state before the Fall–no sin, no curse, no death– is sheer nonsense. And someone affirms that this does not disagree with the historicity and doctrine of the inspiration of scripture? You got to be kidding!
In short, evolutionary teaching, especially theistic evolution, denies this creation-Fall-redemption paradigm, which is everywhere affirmed in both Old and New Testaments and is the revelational and historical foundation which makes the saving Gospel of Christ “Good News” and meaningful. The “Good News” becomes “Bad News” if Adam and the Fall are not historic figures and events.The apostle Paul built his theology on the historicity of Adam and the Fall (1 Corinthians 15: 22-58; Romans 5; 1 Tim. 2:13-14) and Jesus predicated marriage on the historical truth of the supernatural creation of Adam and Eve–the first humans, made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), and not an evolutionary development from some race of hairy anthropids (ape-like men/women). When Jesus referred to marriage, instituted by God, and the creation of Adam and Eve, he accepted both as historical fact (Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6).
Moreover,this is not a fringe view. Many noted scholars, including Oxford fellow Dr. John Lennox, hold that Genesis is real history, denying both chemical and biological “macro-evolution”–that all life forms evolved from a common ancestor. If scripture itself treats the creation and Fall of Adam as historical event, there is no warrant for treating the rest of the creation narrative as symbolism, allegory or other literary device–and that includes modern scientific opinion (i.e. based on radiometric dating), which is not a valid hermeneutic for interpreting Genesis or any portion of scripture. Science has been wrong before on many things. Christians do not discount the findings of fallible scientists (they should be thrilled about such) but that does not mean that they place such findings above the historicity and inspiration of scripture when such findings disagree with the plain teaching of God’s infallible, inspired Word.
One thing for sure: Christians don’t have to be rocket scientists to find coherence between the plain teaching of the Genesis narrative on creation and alternative interpretations (i.e) day-age theory, “progressive creationim, Gap theory, etc.) of Genesis 1 based on scientific opinion (uniformitarian macroevolution; the problem is, however, that there is no coherence between the two (and “progressive creationist views, like that of Astronomer Hugh Ross)does not change that fact. As I already said, “They might get such an idea from Astronomer Hugh Ross, whose skewed and strained “progressive creationist” (billions of years) interpretation of the Genesis account of creation has been biblically, comprehensively, and scientifically ( no straw-dummy arguments I assure you) refuted with brilliant clarity by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D. in his newest and “must-read” book “Refuting Compromise”. But they certainly do not develop such a position from scripture.
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