The Christian doctrine of creation has from the early Christian centuries been confronted with competing explanantions of the origins of all things, whether philosophic or religious. Some of these explanations are not being strongly advocated today, while others offer vigorous competition to the Christian teaching. Especially is this true of forms of evolutionary theory.
I. CONTRARY VIEWS ABOUT ORIGINS#
A. DUALISM#
At least three types of dualism have drawn conclusions contrary to the Christian doctrine of the divine creation of all thngs. These types need to be differentiared.
1. Metaphysical Dualism
This is the view that God and matter are “two self-existent principles”, “distinct from and coeternal with each other”. Accordingly, the material universe is in no sense derived from God, regardless of how matter is explained. Yet matter can be “subordinate to God” and serve as “the instrument of His will”.
Hermogenes the Gnostic, according to the interpretation by Hippolytus, taught “that God made all things out of coeval and unregenerated matter” and “subject to His design”. There was a portion of matter that “remains wild, and is denominated chaotic matter”
In the books sacred to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one finds the teaching that God organized the heavens and the earth and that matter was and is eternal.
2. Moral Dualism
Although this view is not without metaphysical implications, it holds basically that “two antagonistic spirits, one evil and the other good”, presumably both divine, have eternally existed, and matter is “either the word [product] or the instrument” of the evil spirit or being.
Manichaeism, a religion that was founded by Mani, or Manes (c. 215-75) in Persia, posited two eternally antagonistic spirit, the Light and the Darkness, both uncreated, coequal, and having separate kingdoms. Matter, or Hyle, was also unoriginated but belonged to the kingdom of Darkness. Yet the Light was able to produce worlds, elements, and Primordial Man.
On the contrary, in Zoroastrianism, matter was looked upon as “pure” and as the product of the good deity, Ahura Mazda, not of the evil deity, Ahriman.
3. Demiurgic Dualism
This is the view that matter and all the universe derive from the work of a demiurge, or a secondary or subordinate agent of creation, who himself had been created by God. This view is not strictly, only relatively dualistic.
Marcion in the second century A.D. taught that Yahweh or the “just” God, who was quite distinct from the Stranger or Father of Jesus Christ or “good” God, created the world out of preexistent matter. In a sense, Marcion was tritheistic, making the two gods and matter eternal. Moreover, Marcion’s was not strictly a demiurgic view, since Yahweh was not created by the Father of Jesus, though Yahweh is supposed to disappear at the end of the age.
Valentinus, a prominent Gnostic, taught that the world came into existence through Sophia, the last of the thirty-member pleroma, or body of aeons; and Basilides, according to the interpretation given by Irenaeus, posited the emanation of 365 heavens before the 365th one was able to make our world.
According to metaphysical dualism, matter is eternal
According to moral dualism, matter may or may not be eternal
According to demiurgic dualism, matter derives from a secondary creator
B. MONISTIC EMANATIONISM#
This is the view that “the universe is of the same substance with God and is the product of successive” overflowings or outflowings from the nature or being of God. In more colloquial language it means that all things came about through a sloughing off of God.
Basilides, according to Hippolytus, taught that all things derived from God through a world-seed, which proliferated into a “threefold Sonship” and begat the Great Archon, the head of the world, who in turn begat a son and created all the celestial order. Another derived Archon created the non-celestial universe.
Neo-Platonism, represented by Plotinus, taught the emanation of all from the One, or the Good, through the Mind and the World-Soul and the later reabsorption of all that has derived into the One.
John Milton in his Christian Doctrine denied creation ex nihuo and affinned that God “produced all things … out of himself.” Milton avoided “the charge of pantheism” by emphasizing that God granted free will to the “centres of finite existence.”
Emanationism often leads to pantheism since that which has emanated is looked upon as “still divine.” Today it is being taught by the New Age movement.
C. CREATION FROM ETERNITY#
This is the view that creation was “an act of God in eternity past”. It disconnects creation from the beginning of time and tends toward dualism in that the eternal process of creating is tantamount to positing that matter is eternal. There are two distinct types of this theory.
1. Creation of Matter from Eternity of God
Accordingly, matter is eternal but somehow created by God or deity. Aristotle in Physica came to this conclusion from the eternity of motion. Various later thinkers embraced this basic view.
2. Creation of Spirit Beings from Eternity of God
Origen taught that a world of spiritual beings or rational spirits has been eternally or non-temporally created by God. Such beings are “originate” and “generate” and thus derive from God. They are unstable, and such instability led them away from God and toward nonheing so that they diversified and became embodied in our physical world, which is not eternal. Such an eternal world of spirits, according to Origen, was necessary if God was to he omnipotent.
In the modern period the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that all human beings once had a preexistent life as spirit beings, that Satan and one-third of these spirits rebelled and were cast down to earth in a nonhodily existence, and that the earth was created so that other preexistent spirits would have a dwelling place.
Unlike Origen and the Mormons, mainstream Christian thinkers have rejected the idea of the preexistence of the souls of human beings.
D. CONTINOUS PRESENT CREATION#
This is the view that “regards the universe as from moment to moment the result of a new [divine] creation.” Emanationism, as previously discussed, was found to contain the concept of the progressive coming-to-be of all things out of God’s own being. The theory of continuous creation also has a durative element, but that which is being created is other than God, and the process is so broken into momentary units as to threaten any continuity.
The continuous view, therefore, holds that the universe is “continually ceasing to be, and [that] God is continually calling it back into existence.” Strong acknowledged that this view rightly assumes “that all force is will” but pointed out that it erroneously maintains “that all force is divine will, and divine will in direct exercise,” thus downplaying both human wills and the “forces of nature.”
E. ATHEISTIC EVOLUTION#
This view, identified by Strong as “spontaneous generation,” holds that the universe, including all forms oflife, has been derived without any divine agency from a “natural process still going on-matter itself [or energy] having in it the power, under proper conditions, of taking on new functions, and of developing into organic forms.” This view is also known as “evolutionary naturalism.”
Representative of this view have been Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95), an English biologist; Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834-1919), a German zoologist; Julian Sorell Huxley (1887-1975), an English biologist; and George Gaylord Simpson (1902-84), an American paleontologist.
SUMMARY#
Full-fledged dualism posits the eternity of the material universe. Emanationism posits that all things are the efflux of God himself. Creation from eternity past lifts creation to prehistory, whereas continuous creation makes creation to be a moment-by-moment process. Atheistic evolution posits that matter or energy and all forms of life issued from primal energy without the agency of God.
Over against these the Christian doctrine of creation teaches that the one eternal, Triune God created de novo out of nothing all the universe and its forms of life, including human beings, and also sustains this created order toward the end or goal which he has chosen.
II. CREATION AND CONTEMPORARY ISSUES#
It would be impossible to treat exhaustively the many present-day issues or problems related to the Christian doctrine of creation. Instead of an attempt at listing or locating these many issues, we choose rather to focus attention on four problem areas:
Creation and astrophysical theories about the origin of the universe
Creation and geological data about the age of the earth
Creation and evolutionary views about the origin of human beings
Creation and the contemporary religious movement known as “creation science”
A. CREATION AND ASTROPHYSICAL THEORIES ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE#
Astrophysicists and atronomers hold three principal theories as to the origin of the universe.
- First, there is the instantaneous or “big bang” theory of George Gamow (1904-68)
Accordingly, some “ten of fifteen billion years ago, the universe began from a small volume” but a very high density of energy and matter. From a nucleus of neutrons, it exploded into atoms, into elements, and ultimately into stars.
- Second, there is the “steady state” of the universe theory of Fred Hoyle (1915-2001)
Avoiding “infinite density at zero time”, this view hold that throughout time and space, matter has been uniformly coming into existence as “atoms continually condense into stars”, which either die or move out of the range of observation.
- Third, there is the “oscillating universe” theory of Ernst Jules Opik (1893-1985)
Accordingly, the universe began in a smaller volume, has been increasing but is now increasing less rapidly, some billions of years later will actually cease to expand and will decrease its size, and then will begin its expansion anew.
Christians need not decide among the theories since the “religious content of the idea of creation” can be harmonized with any of the theories. Cosmological theories may pose few problems for the Christian faith. Not so in other areas.
B. CREATION AND GEOLOGICAL DATA ABOUT THE AGE OF THE EARTH#
For more than a century it has been increasingly evident that geological science was interpreting its expanding data so as to conclude that the earth is several billion years old, not several thousand years old, as Christian interpreters of Genesis have for centuries been accustomed to conclude. In the resultant confrontation of fossils and faith, therefore, does one face two irreconcilable positions, or is there an adequate way to reconcile the two? Bernard L. Ramm in 1954 identified and evaluated nine different theories or views that had been set forth in an effort to resolve this issue. In what follows we will interpret these and three additional theories.
- First, what Ramm called the “naive-literal view” teaches that creation occurred in six, successive twenty-four-hour periods about 4004 B.C. That date was based on the chronology of Archbishop James Ussher and the computation of the Hebraist and biblical critic,John Llghtfoot (1602-75).
Although its advocates make various efforts to explain fossils, the view seems to be contradicted by the very great age of the earth, for geologists claim that the earth is from four to five billion years old.
- Second, the “religious-only” theory emphasizes that “Genesis states the origin of the universe in religious or theological terms, and… it is the province of science to declare how it happened.”
Again this is the two-track view of religion and science, and by its very definition it in effect throws the question under discussion out of court. Ramm criticized it as a “deistic” concession to science.
- Third, the theory of flood or catastrophe geology, which was commonly held during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, majors on the evidence of animal and vegetable life in the strata of the earth and attributes such to the flood in Noah’s time. During recent decades this view has been reasserted by Seventh-day Adventists under the caption of the “new diluvialism.”
Geologists, however, reject this view on the basis that the evidence of animal and vegetable life could not have been produced during a short span of time but rather over a much longer period of time.
Fourth, the idea of successive catastrophes and creations provided another theory. Advocated by Georges Cuvier ( 1769-1832), French founder of comparative anatomy, and Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (1807-73), Swiss-born professor of natural history at Harvard, it posits a series of floods and/ or catastrophes and a series of new creations in order to account for the geological evidence that fossils were produced over a long period of time.
Fifth,John Pye Smith (1774-1851) in 1840 localized the Genesis accounts of creation by limiting the action to Mesopotamia.
The “six days” refer to the divine reorganization or rehabilitation of a small portion of the earth’s surface; the “earth” of Gen. 1 is identical with the “garden” of Gen. 2. Presumably the earth as a whole could be much older.
- Sixth, Philip Henry Gosse (1810-88), British naturalist and member of the Plymouth Brethren, in 1857 set forth a “pro-chronic or ideal time” theory based on a sharp differentiation between two ways of understanding time, namely, real time and ideal time. Presumably all objects of creation would have both kinds of time.
The earth could be said to have the real time of six to ten thousand years and the ideal time of millions of years. Geologists, however, unimpressed by such a philosophical distinction, insist that real time and ideal time must be identical.
- Seventh, there is the theory of creation-ruinationre-creation, or the restitution theory, popularly known as the “gap” theory.
Advocated by Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), Scottish Presbyterian leader, and expressed in the Scofield Reference Bible, it interprets Gen. 1:2 to mean that original creation was ruined and had to be restored or re-created. Ramm criticized the theory for being an aberration in the history of exegesis, with no basis in the Hebrew text, for eisegeting an elaborate angelology and demonology, and for failing to engage geology in a significant way.
- Eighth, the “age-day” theory, also known as the theory of concordism, takes the “days” of Gen. 1 to be symbolic of and exactly parallel to the periods in the geological and biological history of the earth and of life on the earth.
Millard Erickson has found the “most satisfactory” view to be “a variation of the ageday theory.” Ramm agreed with this theory’s metaphorical interpretation of Gen. 1 but concluded that it had not established exact concordance.
Ninth, an American Mennonite theologian,John C. Wenger, set forth the theory that creation occurred in six ordinary days but not immediately successive days. Robert C. Newman (1941-) and Herman J. Eckelmann, Jr., have recently espoused the same view, but with the idea that most of God’s creative activity occurred between the “days.”
Tenth, Davis Alan Young (1941-), geology professor at Calvin College, has interpreted Genesis 1 to mean that the life-forms specified were chiefly, but not exclusively, created on the one of the six days so indicated, thus allowing for a given life-form to appear on more than one of the six days.
Eleventh, Percy John Wiseman (1888 ?) set forth the view that the six 24-hour days of Gen. 1 were the time within human history when God revealed or “told the story of creation to man.” Consequently, these days “are not related to the age of the earth or the age of man.”
Twelfth, there is the “pictorial day theory,” or the “theory of moderate concordism.”
Advocated by Ramm, this view finds the main purpose of Genesis to be religious or theological ( that is, to evoke the worship of the Creator and to prohibit idolatry), makes a metaphorical interpretation of the “days” of Gen. 1 so that they are pictorial or revelatory days, regards Gen. 1 as more topical than chronological and as pre-scientific, and opts for a moderate, not an exact, concordism.
Conrad Hyers (1933-), a Protestant theologian, has offered a critique ofRamm’s position, labeling it “a form of the ‘God of the gaps’ hypothesis,” in which Genesis 1 is surrendered to science and turned “into a scientific allegory.”
The age of the earth continues to be an issue for scientists and for Christian interpreters of Genesis.
C. CREATION AND/OR THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN BEINGS#
Since the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of species in 1859, divine creation versus the evolution of human beings has been a major issue for Christians and for Western civilization. A veritable avalanche of writings has come forth from numerous perspectives.
Three major categories will be employed in an effort to identify the other options: fiat or instantaneous creation, theistic evolution, and progressive creation.
1. Fiat or Instantaneous Creation
This view holds that the divine creation of all things occurred within a relatively short segment of time. Usually its proponents give a literal and time-oriented interpretation to the six “days” of Gen. 1. Furthermore, this view concludes that such creation brought about an immediate fixity of species and that there has been no subsequent change or development within these species.
It would be difficult indeed to find many practicing scientists today who fully embrace this view, and its proponents are drawn from the Christian community. A leading exponent is Henry Madison Morris (1918-2006).
2. Theistic Evolution
Here the problem of terminology becomes serious. There is no uniform sense of meaning for the term “theistic evolution.” Millard Erickson prefers to differentiate “deistic evolution” from “theistic evolution,” when dealing specifically with the creation of humans:
The former means the view that “God began the process of evolution” and then withdrew to become “Creator emeritus”
The latter for the view that, whereas “man’s physical nature is a product of the process of evolution,” “God specially created the spiritual nature of Adam.”
More often “theistic evolution” has been used more broadly to encompass all those understandings of origins that limit God to an initiatory role. Accordingly, theistic evolution means that God is at best immanent in the process of evolution which he somehow began, but that immanence does not limit natural selection or enable the coming to be of new life-forms.
3. Progressive Creation
This view holds that God as Creator not only was active in the initiation of a process which is most often called “evolution” but also was directly active at crucial stages or thresholds to bring forth new forms of life. Although the matter is not without dispute, it seems best to reckon the views of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas as belonging under the category of progressive creation.
Augustine discussed creation in five of his writings. As to the time of creation he taught both that creation took place on the several “days” of Genesis 1 and that it occurred simultaneously. But Augustine’s concept of the manner of creation has attracted the attention of modem scholars, especially since Darwin’s time. God, according to the bishop of Hippo, implanted “causal reasons” (rationes seminales, rationes primordiales) in the created order in the beginning.
Augustine seemed to posit a proliferation of life-forms from divinely created “seeds” but under the guidance of the Creator.
Thomas Aquinas rejected the Aristotelian view that matter is eternal but created by the Prime Mover and also rejected the view that creation occurred eternally so as opt for God’s willing the existence of the world. To what extent did Thomas envision process in the creation? Ramm summarizes as follows:
Evolution is but the modus operandi by which the ideas or forms or universals are realized in the animal and plant world. God as the cause of all motion is the spiritual and intelligent force behind evolution, and evolution occurs solely because there is a God, and because Nature is constituted in the terms described by Aquinas.
Those in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially Roman Catholic theologians and scientists, who have held that Adam’s body was derived from prehuman beings but his soul or mind was directly created by God should be reckoned as progressive creationists.
Progressive creation seems to offer more promise than the other major options Millard Erickson, favoring it, understands it “as a combination of a series of de novo creative acts and an immanent or processive operation.” He allows for “microevolution” or ‘intrakind’ development" but denies “macroevolution” or ‘interkind’ development."
4. Creation Science
In view of the regnant role of naturalistic or antitheistic philosophies of evolution, especially in university circles, with their assumption of the earth as being several billions of years old and human beings as having been derived from subhuman or prehuman mammals without divine creation, it is not surprising that there would be some reactions to this dominant perspective from Christian and theistic perspectives.
One such reaction came in the United States through the creation science movement, of which Henry Madison Morris was the chief ideologue and which involved certain scientists who are Christians.
The basic teachings of the movement may be summarized as follows:
a) the militant rejection of all forms of evolution and evolutionism
b) a hermeneutic of Genesis 1 which takes it as a literal, historical narrative
c) reckoning the Bible as “a textbook on science”
d) the fiat creation in six consecutive 24-hour periods of all things in their present form
e) the interpretation of the flood of Noah’s time as worldwide and as occurring between three and five thousand years before Abraham
f) the rejection of uniformitarianism in geology and the advocacy of catastrophism
g) the advocacy of the teaching of “scientific creation” without any biblical or theological implications in public schools
Creation science elicited various critiques or refutations. Conrad Hyers rejected creation science’s viewing the Bible as science and Genesis 1 as a “‘straightforward historical narrative,’ the intention of which was to give information about the method of creation. Differentiating “creation” and “creationism,” he charged that “creation science,” as identical with the latter, made scientific investigation “subservient to a theory of biblical exegesis” and hence its resultant scientific views were being “rejected by the vast majority of scientists.” Moreover, the movement “compromises the religious meaning of Genesis and is an accommodation to scientific language and method”; Hyers labeled this a “modernistic” approach.
5. Intelligent Design
The other reaction, the intelligent design movement, came from the sciences and mathematics. Without invoking explicitly Christian or theistic presuppositions, it purports to have theological implications. As a science, it investigates the effects of intelligent causes. More particularly it is “a theory ofinformation,” both “detecting and measuring information” and “explaining its origin and its flow.”
Intelligent design argues strongly for the scientific evidence for design and by implication a designing intelligence but leaves to theology questions as to the identity of the Designer.
Objectors have contended that intelligent design “commits a god-of-the-gaps fallacy,” “confuses design with intentionality,” is nothing more than “sophisticated” creation science, is not truly scientific because it is anti-naturalistic, “cannot be reconciled with the problem of evil,” fails to recognize that design is an “anthropic coincidence,” wrongly mixes mathematics and biology, and wrongly makes claims about a transcendent designer. Others have posited likely desirable cultural implications of the movement.
SUMMARY#
In this chapter we have examined five present-day issues involving creation: creation and astrophysical theories about the origin of the universe; creation and geological data about the age of the earth; creation and the biological teachings about the evolution of human beings; creation and creation science; and creation and intelligent design. It should be quite evident that we have not obtained final answers in this brief quest, but Christians should recognize anew the truth and centrality of the doctrine of creation and seek to apply it to all areas oflife.