Theistic evolution
Creation and evolution cannot go together. They are incompatible.
Evolution is the supposed process that, driven by chance, has defied entropy and built a universe over billions of years. It required no divine intelligence and no supernatural intervention. And it needed no creator God of the Bible.
But creation ex nihilo is the exact opposite. It is not gradualistic. God did not work with immense wastefulness and numerous false starts. He created all things in just six days (Genesis 1); ‘he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast’ (Psalm 33:9). He did it that way because he wanted to; and he did it that way out of love for his Son Jesus Christ (John 1:1-5; Ephesians 1) as well as humankind (Genesis 2).
Only a theory
Creation and evolution are antagonistic ideas. There is necessarily mutual exclusion between a supernatural explanation of origins and an explanation grounded in atheistic naturalism. To put creation and evolution together into something called ‘theistic evolution’ is logically absurd. It is to create a chimera and an oxymoron.
But why do so many resort to ‘theistic evolution’ when the creation/evolution debate takes place? Many probably do so because they feel intimidated by a brashly confident scientific establishment – and the media that trumpets evolution as fact.
But evolution (in the popular ‘macroevolution’ sense of the word) is not fact. It is only a theory, and a theory which on close examination fails to explain significant chunks of data.
We have sympathy with Christians who feel pressurised by their intellectual superiors into accepting evolutionary thinking. What Christian young person has not felt spiritually lonely and browbeaten (especially in this Darwin year) in the presence of teachers and professors assuring them that tendentious evolutionary reasoning is good science?
But let’s not be browbeaten! Read your Bible carefully and read your science carefully. Nothing in the realm of true science contradicts the biblical worldview. There is nothing in the Bible that does not accord with the real scientific data.
Despised minority
Some theistic evolutionists derive comfort from the fact that otherwise sound evangelical theologians like B. B. Warfield embraced aspects of Darwinian thinking. But that proves nothing.
If we were all to build our ideas and practice on the aberrations of good men, we would write anti-Semitic tracts as did Martin Luther, execute heretics as did John Calvin, and call predestination the horrible decree of the devil as did John Wesley! To merely build on the opinions of others is to build on sand. All our thinking must come to the bar of Scripture.
But maybe some embrace theistic evolution for darker reasons. We may claim that we’re ‘not ashamed of the gospel’. Fair enough; Romans 1:16 says that very thing! But are we ashamed of the Book of Genesis? Are we ashamed of a six-day creation?
We don’t like to be found in a despised minority. We don’t, if honest, like being taken as fools and simpletons for believing in an inerrant Bible, and especially for believing that Genesis 1-11 is historically true.
Yet are we ashamed of Adam and Eve, even though Jesus himself said, ‘Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”?’ (Matthew 19:4). Is not the real issue, then, carrying the cross of Jesus Christ? Courage, brothers and sisters! Take up that cross boldly.
Theistic evolution just does not work. It does not soften the consistent secular humanist for a moment and it runs contrary to the testimony of Scripture. If theistic evolution is the fence we are trying to sit on, let’s get off it quickly.
