by Dr. David Moffett-Moore, pastor and author of The Jesus Manifesto: A Participatory Study Guide to the Sermon on the Mount, Pathways to Prayer, Wind and Whirlwind: Being a Pastor in a Storm of Change, and more!
The Psalmist writes, “O God, our God, how majestic is your name over all creation!” as book-ends for a psalm that beholds the wonders of the universe, the stars above and the flocks beneath, and in wonder and delight is moved to glorify God.
My father was walking home from a Boy Scout meeting late one evening and, beholding the canopy of creation over his head, the heavens in all their glory, felt that oceanic oneness and described this experience as his call to professional ministry. Growing up in a Christian Scientist household, he had little experience of clergy yet this mystic encounter convinced him to become one.
“Why not a scientist?” I asked him. “Why not an astronomer or astrophysicist and study those stars in the midnight sky?” But it was not that kind of reasonable, rational experience; it was more experiential than intellectual. He felt called, compelled to a spiritual pursuit based upon this physical, tangible experience.
I think modern science is, or at least can be, a divine revelation and an opportunity to experience the divine in contemporary ways. God may be encountered in telescope or microscope, in petri dish or specimen slide as readily as in any sacred text, any holy canon.
One of the biblical images of God and nature is that all the universe is but the garb that God wears, worn not to conceal but to reveal God’s divine presence in, with and through all of God’s creation. In my studies of Celtic spirituality I am reminded that the Christian Celts regarded the created order as God’s first revelation and any text on a page or written manuscript as a secondary revelation. Even according to those written words, God’s first spoken words were “Let there be!” and there was, as God in Genesis speaks creation into being.
In my book Creation in Contemporary Experience I include introductory chapters on scripture and doctrine, but the meat of the book is in modern science as contemporary revelations and experiences of the divine. Evolutionary biology and morphic field theory, the big bang as God’s “Let there be,” quantum mechanics as the dance of the cosmos, chaos theory as allowing free will, Christ as an event of spiritual singularity.
I believe that the God who loves us, forms us, frees us and fills us, desires to be known and experienced by us, wants to be at one with us in our atonement, and therefore continues to reveal God’s presence, purpose and promise to us through our study of all creation, from quarks to quasars, from electron probability fields to black holes. I believe that scientists of all stripes can join with mystics and theologians, declaring “O God, our God, how majestic is your name in all creation!”
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Category: Science and Religion
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David Moffett-Moore: God of All Creation
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Does Biological Evolution Explain our World? —YES!
[EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post. Join in by posting your comments.]
Evolution and the Character of God
by Allan R. Bevere
Does biological evolution explain our world? I’m not sure how that question in and of itself is significant. I answer “yes” to that question, but it seems to me the importance of the question can only be found in the inquiry that must lay behind it– “Is biological evolution consistent with the character of God who created the world and the universe?” Without that prior concern, the main question for discussion here is of little significance, at least for those who believe in God. So, in answering the question given to me, I will make in initial case that evolution is consistent with the character of the God, who created all things including life on Earth.
Prior to the main subject of this post, a few caveats are in order:
First, I don’t think we can separate the biological evolutionary questions from the evolutionary nature of the universe itself. If the universe has evolved and is evolving than it reasonable to assume that biological evolution on Earth makes sense. When we isolate how human life came to be from the rest of the cosmos, I think we confuse one issue making it two. Why would God create the universe in one fashion while bringing human life in another? Thus, I must deal with the question of evolution in general, which includes the cosmos and life on Earth.
Second, since I accept evolutionary theory, that means I do not believe that Genesis 1 and 2 should be interpreted, as they say, “literally” (an oft abused term). There’s a mythology in many fundamentalist and evangelical circles that the church unanimously interpreted the creation narratives literally until Charles Darwin came along in the nineteenth century. In fact, the church has debated for almost two thousand years how to read the creation material as Daniel Harrell points out quite well.1 The reason I mention this is that often creationists will do a bait and switch arguing that only those who hold to a literal reading of the creation narratives believes in the authority of Scripture. But what is authoritative is Scripture, not a particular hermeneutic. One can hardly accuse St. Augustine, for example, of denying the authority of the Bible. So, let’s take that criticism off the table and stick to the actual substance of the debate.
Third, that means those who take issue with my position on evolution must do so based on the science alone, not on guilding the data to fit a particular interpretation of Genesis. For me, Genesis is one thing, and science another. Genesis 1 and 2 answer the why of creation. Science answers the how. My use of Scripture in this post will highlight the character of God and why I think his character is consistent with evolutionary creation. My concerns with Scripture are theological, not scientific.
Now, on to the main argument.
First, God is truth and does not create deception. The Bible is clear on this:
God is not a human being, that he should lie,
or a mortal, that he should change his mind.
Has he promised, and will he not do it?
Has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it? (Numbers 23:19; see also Titus 1:2)
1 John 1:21 states, 21I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth.
The point for our purposes in this post is that since God is truth God cannot create in a deceptive way. Creation itself and its coming into existence with reflect that character. If the age of the universe is not 14.6 billion years and if the age of the Earth is not 4.5 billion years, and the appearance of homo sapiens on our planet was not approximately 200,000 years ago, why is that not obvious? It would seem that God in creating rocks that appear old God himself has created a deception. And those who believe that the universe and the Earth are not obviously old are clearly guilding the evidence. We can accurately measure light from distant stars that tell us their distance. The farthest stars known to us are anywhere from 750,000 to 900,000 light years away, and those stars are not close to the center of our galaxy or for that matter the center of the universe. Contrary to what some will argue, scientific dating is an accurate way to assess the age of rocks and bones and other earthly things as well. The oldest rocks discovered on our planet are anywhere from 3 to 4.4 billion years old.2 Again, we must wonder why God would deceive us in creating a universe and our Earth that only appear old? This is not in character with the God of the Bible.
Moreover, why would God work in a microevolutionary way, something that even creationists acknowledge, but fail to do so in a macroevolutionary manner since microevolution happens by the exact same mechanisms as macroevolution?3Is this not inconsistent? Why allow evolution to occur within a species (microevolution), but not between species (macroevolution)? Is God’s character inconsistent and doesn’t this make God even more deceptive, to create one way on a large scale and a different way on a small scale?
Second, evolution is about a relational universe and world, and God is inherently relational. One does not need to know the Bible forward and backward to know that God is relational and desires to be in relationship with human beings and all of creation. Theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, John Polkinghorne has argued cogently that the universe is inherently relational4 and we should expect it to be no different in character from its Creator.
In Romans 8:19 St. Paul writes,
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Salvation in the New Testament is cosmic in scope. The cross and resurrection of Jesus is not about individual human salvation alone, but about the redemption of creation. Just as God desires to be in relationship with men and women, so God desires relationship with the cosmos he created. Just as our relationship with God grows as we evolve (mature) as disciples, so creation itself evolves as God enjoys seeing the cosmos develop and mature. Indeed, even creation itself is inherently relational with itself. John Polkinghorne writes,
Einstein went on to develop the theory of general relativity, showing that space, time and matter are closely interconnected in a kind of integrated package, in which matter curves spacetime and spacetime curves the paths of matter. The cosmic ‘container’ and its contents are not separable, but intimately linked with each other.5
The interrelatedness between matter and spacetime is only one of many examples. This inherent relationality not only reflects the character of a Trinitarian God, which St. Augustine referred to as a fellowship of love, but it also strongly suggests that this cosmic relationality is revealed in the evolutionary process. One cannot have microevolution, which we know takes place, without a macroevolutionary process that is intimately related to it.
Third, creation is dynamic just as God is dynamic, not static, as creationist accounts suggest. In creationist accounts of the universe the world was created in six twenty-four hour days and when it was completed, it was done. The problem with this notion of creation being completely finished is that we know it is simply not true. The universe even now is expanding. New galaxies and stars and worlds are being created. The cosmos is not statically finished, but it is still being created. Alister McGrath notes,
The twentieth century saw dramatic changes in our understanding of the origins and development of the universe. The first two decades were dominated by the assumption that the universe was static…. The solution of his [Einstein’s] equations indicated that the universe was not static, but expanding.6
McGrath goes on to argue that such a dynamic universe that is evolving does not reflect the static deistic God of the Enlightenment, but better reflects the dynamic Trinitarian God of Christianity.7 It seems to me quite problematic for creationists to reconcile the dynamic, relational God of Scripture with their static understanding of how God created.
Fourth, and finally, through the evolution of creation, God allows the universe freely to make itself. In a sense, God has built freedom into the universe. If God is inherently relational and wants to be in relationship with his creation, he must allow the freedom of creation. This does not deny God’s providence, but “a balance is struck between the actions of God and the actions of creatures.”8As human beings are free to choose their own way, so the evolution of creation is consistent with the character of God that allows creation itself to go its own way. Once again, I quote John Polkinghorne:
A creation allowed to make itself can be held to be a great good, but it has a necessary cost not only in the blind alleys and extinctions that are the inescapable dark side of the evolutionary process, but also in the very character of the processes of a world in which evolution takes place. The engine driving biological evolution is genetic mutation and it is inevitable in a universe that is reliable and not capriciously magical, that the same biochemical processes which enable germ cells to produce new forms of life will also allow somatic cells to mutate and become malignant That there is cancer in creation is not something that a more competent and compassionate Creator could easily have eliminated, but is the necessary cost of a creation allowed to make itself.
God acts within the open grain of nature and not against it. God interacts with creatures but does not overrule them, for they are allowed to be themselves and to make themselves. It follows from this that not everything that happens will be in accordance with God’s direct will. The divine sharing of the causality of the world with creatures will permit the act of a murderer or the incidence of cancer, though both events run counter to God’s desires9
Such freedom is seen countless times throughout the Bible in reference to human beings who also unfortunately all too often choose to go their own way. Why would it be any different with the entire creation? And it is in such freedom and in God’s desire to be in relationship to his creation, that God takes the risk of becoming human in Jesus Christ; and in the cross and resurrection, displays his willingness to allow human beings in their freedom to reject him on Calvary, and in his providence to insist otherwise in the empty tomb.
Does evolution explain our world? Indeed it does. It explains the very character of the universe because all of creation reflects the character of God.
NOTES
- Daniel Harrell, “How was the Genesis account of creation interpreted before Darwin? http://biologos.org/common-questions/biblical-interpretation/early-interpretations-of-genesis
- Becky Oskin, “Confirmed: Oldest Fragment of Early Earth is 4.4 Billion Years Old,” http://m.livescience.com/43584-earth-oldest-rock-jack-hills-zircon.html
- Evolution at different scales: micro to macro http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evoscales_01
- See John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 60-87.
- Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity, p. 73.
- Alister McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009, p. 112-113.
- McGrath, A Fine-Tuned Universe, p. 118.
- Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity, p. 99.
- Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity, p. 72.
Allan’s books can be viewed and ordered here: https://energiondirect.info/authors/authors-a-c/allan-r-bevere -
How Does Science Inform Biblical Interpretation?
by Steve Kindle
“By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.”
~ErasmusWhat follows in this post is my personal reflection on Dr. Vick’s post which ran yesterday. Although I hope he finds this compatible with his own view, he may not. He is only responsible for prodding me to think through some of the implications of what he wrote.
The heliocentric model of the universe changes everything.
Since the Copernican revolution, we can no longer accept the Ancient Near Eastern three-tiered universe with heaven “up there,” and Sheol “down below.” Paul’s vision of a man transported to “the third heaven” reveals a psychology steeped in that worldview. Elijah taken to heaven in a fiery chariot, and even the ascension of Jesus, can no longer be taken literally. Given the vastness of the universe, the psalmist’s question, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” takes on deepened meaning. Can we still speak of God “in the heavens,” or literally understand that “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.”? I think not.
The biological Theory of Evolution changes everything.
No longer can we think of the world as created in six days, or Bishop Ussher’s 6,000 years ago, or the Creationist’s 10,000. The creation narratives in Genesis can no longer be taken literally, but as a poetic ode to creation and the Creator. Adam and Eve can now be seen as a primordial myth that speaks to the human condition, not of the actual First Parents. The Flood has shrunk to the area surrounding the Black Sea about 12000 BCE. (The universality of flood stories can be traced back to the melting of the great ice sheet that covered most of the northern hemisphere at the same period, and how it affected its people.)
The only answer that literalists can give in response is that the Bible is the word of God and must take priority over any other presumed authority…regardless of the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. “The Bible says” trumps scientific findings.
Literalists do claim a kind of science on their side, Creation Science. They marshal “evidence” that no scientist in the academies supports, even continuing to cite long overturned arguments from John Whitcomb, Henry Morris, and George McCready Price. The Creation Science movement proved too embarrassing for many scientists of faith, because it was tied too closely to biblical arguments. They began the Intelligent Design movement and eschewed any taint of religion in their deliberations. However, virtually all are aligned with some form of Christian Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism, which drives their efforts, not pure science. They have yet to make significant inroads into the wider scientific community.
So what does the consensus scientific worldview do for biblical interpretation and theology?- It removes biblical supernaturalism as an explanation of events.
- God’s transcendence is not physical (out there), but “wholly other.”
- Literalism is no longer the first and preferred reading.
- The biblical notions of sin and salvation (atonement) need to be understood as arising from the ancient milieu, and not appropriate today.
- The Bible, rather than being a scientific textbook, can be recognized as the record of a people trying to understand their world and their place in it. It is the people’s record, not God’s.
- The apocalyptic undergirding of the New Testament needs to be seen as a yearning for hope in a world gone mad, not as a timetable for the ages.
- It ends the dualism that turns the world into a battleground instead of a paradise.
What are some of the applications that can be made from these assertions?
It removes biblical supernaturalism as an explanation of events.
God can no longer be seen as acting from outside the cosmos upon the Earth shaping events and suspending natural law at will. Things have proceeded over the past 14.5 billion years in a natural fashion and continue to do so. We know that the Earth rotates about 25,000 miles per hour and orbits the sun, which is stationary (relative to the earth). The story of the battle for Jericho includes God causing the sun to stand still in the sky to allow for more daylight. This is a perfect example of the ancient worldview’s explanation for how Israel wins battles: God intervenes for them. This, for me, serves as an archetype for all such interventions.
God’s transcendence is not physical (out there), but “wholly other.”
By removing God from beyond the cosmos (heaven), we have not demoted God, but made God immanent—within all things. In certain ways, God is closer to humanity than before. Gone are such notions as “the Man upstairs,” “the Old Man in the sky,” and other figures of speech that make God remote and far removed from human life. God being intimately related to and involved with every aspect of life, from the smallest subatomic particle, to the fullness of the cosmos, makes everything sacred and gives humans motivation for proper care of creation.
Literalism is no longer the first and preferred reading.
Knowing that we are reading ancient documents that are informed by a worldview vastly different from our own, we can no longer accept their understanding at face value. Taking the text literally is to overlook this fact. We begin interpreting by asking what informed the author to understand the text in this way, and then compare it to how we find things in our world today.
The biblical notions of sin and salvation (atonement) need to be understood as arising from the ancient milieu, and not appropriate today.
Can you imagine anyone operating out of the modern worldview attaching the remedy for sin to blood atonement? The gods of the Ancient Near East were capricious and vengeful. In agrarian societies, the only thing they had to offer the gods to appease them were what they grew or the livestock they raised. They saw these things as an extension of themselves, and, in a way, the offering of themselves. Blood, life, in exchange for their lives.
Even the Bible comes against this notion from time to time. From Amos: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.
Even the pagans such as King Nebuchadnezzar found peace with God away from blood atonement. From Daniel: Therefore, O king, may my counsel be acceptable to you: atone for your sins with righteousness, and your iniquities with mercy to the oppressed, so that your prosperity may be prolonged.”
Not all the atonement theories arising from the New Testament and later required a blood sacrifice for efficacy. Specifically, Luke sees salvation arising out of being faithful to the end, even as was Jesus, who models our means of salvation.
The Bible, rather than being a scientific textbook, can now be considered a record of a people trying to understand their world and their place in it. It is the peoples’ record, not God’s.
Rather than this being woeful, it is an amazing realization. Humans are capable of spiritual insights and profound realizations about the world and themselves. God will be seen as a participant in this, but the record is from humans. Therefore, for humans to engage the Bible as human to human is to do precisely what the ancient people were doing that resulted in the Bible. The tradition continues into our own time and much spiritual good is reaped in the process.
The apocalyptic undergirding of the New Testament needs to be seen as a yearning for hope in a world gone mad, not as a timetable for the ages.
Apocalyptic theology, that is, the understanding that God shapes all world history according to God’s will, and that good will ultimately triumph over evil, arose out of a need, indeed, a longing, that this is the case. I believe that God will ultimately prevail in securing a world typified by shalom, and I recognize this as a faith statement. But the notion of God superintending history, much as a mother hen, doesn’t give free will its due.
The Hebrew Bible is full of instances where God is depicted as “changing his mind.” First, with being sorry, actually repenting making humankind, and rectifying this by the genocide of the race. Then there is Moses pleading with God in the wilderness not to destroy Israel. God relents when Moses argues that the Egyptians will laugh at him. These and many other examples suggest that not all things are set in place “before the foundation of the world.” That the future is unknown and not predicable, as apocalyptic would have it.
It ends the dualism that turns the world into a battleground instead of a paradise.
Religious dualism is the idea that there are two supernatural forces diametrically opposed to one another vying for dominance. For nearly 4.5 billion years of the formation of planet Earth, down to our own day, dualism was irrelevant. Actually, the idea that there is God and an anti-god (Satan), is very new to humanity. In fact, the Hebrew Bible’s recording of the history of Israel from creation to the return from Babylonian exile got along without it. Satan, as known in the New Testament is absent. Dualism emerges in the Intertestamental period and flourishes in the New Testament. Many scholars believe that Jewish theologians were introduced to dualism during the Babylonian captivity with their exposure to dualistic Zoroastrianism. Dualism tends to divide people, institutions, and things into good or evil. Monism (the metaphysical and theological view that all is one, that there are no fundamental divisions) promotes world unity and peace and is the basis of Shalom.
Conclusion
We in the 21st century have been given a marvelous inheritance in the Bible. If we can learn to view it as a human enterprise encapsulating the wisdom of a people who earnestly sought to find answers to the human predicament, we, too, will find our way out of darkness and into the light. But only if we are not imprisoned by an outmoded and now harmful worldview that would keep us from finding our own way.
Steve’s books can be viewed and ordered here: https://energiondirect.info/authors/authors-d-k/steve-kindle -
Living in God's Evolving Creation
by Dr. Robert Cornwall
Since the beginning of time human beings have been trying to explain how things came to be. Today we often turn to science for answers. The most respected answers assume some form of evolutionary development occurring over vast periods of time. Those who disagree with this assessment most often do so on the basis of religion. They deem the scientific consensus to be in conflict with their reading of the biblical story, especially that found in the first three chapters of Genesis. For a significant number of Christians Charles Darwin is the enemy. To embrace evolution is to dismiss God. There are others of us who disagree. We believe that one can hold both truths at the same time. God is Creator and science suggests that evolution is the means by which that creation unfolded.
About a decade back I signed a public letter as a member of the clergy affirming my recognition of the scientific consensus. I have tried to have my congregations observe some form of Evolution Sunday/Weekend. In part I’ve done this because I believe that the credibility of the Christian faith requires this. That is, if we dismiss science as some kind of enemy of the faith, then we hold the gospel hostage to an earlier scientific vision.
There’s another reason why I think it is important to try to hold in proper tension my faith in God the Creator and the scientific consensus. That concerns the way in which we live on earth. The scientific consensus tells us that the earth is experiencing significant climate change. 2015 is on target to be the warmest year on record. Each year the earth seems to be getting warmer. Polar ice caps are melting. Deserts are advancing. Weather becomes more unpredictable. It is unfortunate that many of those reject this scientific consensus are Christians. They reject it in large part because they’ve already discounted science. They’ve embraced forms of pseudo-science to explain the origins of the earth. So it’s no surprise that they are attracted to forms of pseudo-science that reject the premise that humans are contributing to climate change. Some Christians have embraced the premise that since God appears to give “Dominion” over the earth to the human creation, then we are given permission to despoil the earth. Indeed, some who embrace an apocalyptic vision of the faith believe that since we’re in the last days there’s no reason not to use up all the resources at hand. Why worry about fossil fuels? Why worry about polluting rivers and streams and the air? Why worry about changing climate or depleting ozone layer?
That is one way of seeing things, but I’m not sure it’s faithful to science or faith. Growing numbers of people, including evangelical Christians have begun rethink our relationship to the creation. They have begun to think in terms of stewardship of resources rather than dominion over them. Science can be an important partner in this effort. It can reveal to us the way in which we misuse or overuse the creation. I’m tempted to use the word resources, but that is probably not the best way of speaking. Instead, let us think of the Creation as a gift of God. As icons/images of God we’ve been given responsibility to tend the garden. To do this we need to listen for God’s voice, which can be revealed in Scripture but also through science.
Charles Darwin found himself at odds with God, or so he thought. He considered himself something of an agnostic and even an atheist. Yet, it is said that he went to church with his wife who was a devout Anglican. So in the spirit of that expression of solidarity, perhaps we too can worship God in the presence of Charles Darwin. We do so by taking both science and faith seriously. We express this solidarity in the way we treat God’s Creation.
Order Worshiping with Charles Darwin here: https://energiondirect.info/small-group-resources/ultimate-allegiance
