A Biblical Case Against Theistic Evolution
A Biblical Case Against Theistic Evolution: Is it Compatible with the Bible?
By: Wayne Grudem
with Contributors: John D. Currid, Guy Prentiss Waters, Gregg R Allison, Fred G Zaspel
Evolution has been and continues to be a controversial topic. Much of the discussion ends up being people talking past each other because they don’t first identify what they even mean by evolution.
Wayne Grudem and his contributors have done an excellent job writing this book in a clear and descriptive way. They define their terms fairly stating the positions of both sides and where conclusions are derived from.
The premise of this work is to lay out the arguments as to why theistic evolution (which is different than just ‘evolution’) is incompatible with what the Bible teaches. It focuses on how we interpret the first few chapters of Genesis.
It is not about how old the earth is or if it was a literal six day creation. (Though I kind of wanted to go there) It is not even about whether people who believe in some form of evolution are ‘true Christians.’
It is an argument to compel readers to view Genesis as an historical account, not figurative, allegorical, or mythical.
It is an argument that exposes the dangers of misinterpreting Genesis and how it undermines several crucial doctrines of Scripture.
To that end, this book is very compelling.
Today evolution is taught and referred to as if it is a collection of proven facts. It is not, yet anyone who questions it is labeled as someone who rejects science.
As Christians, we know that God is pro-science. The Bible does not lie and it is not at odds with science.
So what are we to think about evolution or theistic evolution?
What is Theistic Evolution?
For clarity purposes: the theistic evolution (or evolutionary creation) that is presented in this book is based on the beliefs of the most prominent advocates for it. Obviously not all adherents will all agree on everything that ‘title’ may mean.
The definition they use for theistic evolution is this:
“God created matter and after that did not guide or intervene or act directly to cause any empirically detectable change in the natural behavior of matter until all living things had evolved by purely natural processes.”
Theistic evolution is a version of evolution in which Christians still believe in a Creator God and believe in the Bible. But adherents believe that God created matter with certain properties (that he sustained) that engaged in an evolutionary process (without his further intervention) that produced the world, humans, and creatures we have today.
Grudem shares that according to Theistic Evolution:
Adam and Eve were not the first human beings (and perhaps they never even existed).
Adam and Eve were born of human parents.
God did not act directly or specially to create Adam out of dust from the ground.
God did not directly create Eve from a rib taken from Adam’s side.
Adam and Eve were never sinless human beings.
Adam and Eve did not commit the first human sins, for human beings were doing morally evil things long before Adam and Eve.
Human death did not begin as a result of Adam’s sin, for human beings existed long before Adam and Eve and they were always subject to death.
Not all human beings have descended from Adam and Eve, for there were thousands of other human beings on Earth at the time that God chose two of them as Adam and Eve.
God did not directly act in the natural world to create different “kinds” of fish, birds, and land animals.
God did not “rest” from his work of creation or stop any special creative activity after plants, animals, and human beings appeared on the earth.
God never created an originally “very good” natural world in the sense of a safe environment that was free of thorns and thistles and similar harmful things.
After Adam and Eve sinned, God did not place any curse on the world that changed the workings of the natural world and made it more hostile to mankind.
Before reading this book I had already decided what I believed about evolution. Some parts of these arguments were not new to me, however some of the points the authors bring up were ones I had not thought about before.
It seems simple to just say- “I believe in God and in evolution. I believe God used evolution to create the world.”
But if you say that… do you know all of the things that that would imply about how God works, how sin and redemption works, how that impacts your view of humanity?
If you will allow yourself to consider the questions Grudem asks and the Scripture they use to support their claims, you may be surprised how flimsy the basis for theistic evolution really is.
Brief Synopsis
There is a lot of information in this book so I won’t share it all with you. But here are the main things the book covers:
Chapter 1: What is Theistic Evolution?
Chapter 2: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with the Teachings of the Old Testament
Were the original authors of Genesis influenced by other ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythological writings?
What does the original language and structuring tell us?
What is the genre of Genesis 1? [They propose “exalted prose narrative”]
Do the rest of the Old Testament authors view Genesis as historical?
Chapter 3: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with the Teachings of the New Testament
How do we interpret genealogies?
How is Jesus the second Adam and what does that mean for us?
What does Jesus say about Genesis?
Chapter 4: Theistic Evolution Is Incompatible with Historical Christian Doctrine
What have historical church creeds stated about the doctrines of creation and sin?
Additional Note: B. B. Warfield Did Not Endorse Theistic Evolution as It Is Understood Today
I’m guessing theologian Warfield is a significant figure in terms of the evolutionary discussion. I was not aware of that so this section wasn’t as influential for me as the others, but apparently knowing what Warfield thinks of this topic is worth analyzing and so they have considered what he has written about it.
Chapter 5: Theistic Evolution Undermines Twelve Creation Events and Several Crucial Christian Doctrines
Grudem goes through all twelve criteria listed above and explains how they are not compatible with Scripture. (Even if you don’t want to go through the entire book, just reading this one chapter is pretty informative)
Sidenote: They mentioned theistic evolutionists discussing the diverse genetic record as evidence of human origins being from thousands of ancestors not just Adam and Eve. They didn’t really counter this point in the book. I was curious and did a tiny bit of extra research. Looking at the population’s genetic record, it is not impossible for all of humanity to be derived from two progenitors. If Adam and Eve were created with diverse genes, it would explain the diverse genetic record we can see today. This is not a problem after all.
Why Does It Matter?
You may read through these things and think- why does it matter? Can’t we just agree to disagree?
And Grudem points out that what you believe about evolution or creation is not a salvation issue.
However, just as he explains in his book Evangelical Feminism, our beliefs are formed by how we view Scripture. If we interpret Bible passages certain ways, it undermines the truthfulness and inerrancy of Scripture which is a very significant issue.
“Once the truthfulness of Scripture is lost, the entire Christian faith begins to unravel… The question is whether the Bible is truthful in all that it affirms, on whatever topic it wishes to speak about.”
“Proponents of theistic evolution are claiming, in essence, that there are whole areas of human knowledge about which they will not allow the Bible to speak with authority. They will allow the Bible to speak to us about salvation, but not about the origin of all living things on the earth, the origin of human beings, the origin of moral evil in the human race, the origin of human death, the origin of natural evil in the world, the perfection of the natural world as God originally created it, and even the nature of Christ’s own personal involvement as the Creator of “all things . . . in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Col. 1:16). These are massive areas of human knowledge, affecting our outlook on our entire lives. Yet theistic evolution has decreed that the Bible cannot authoritatively speak to us about these areas of human knowledge. Those topics are the exclusive domain of modern naturalistic science, off-limits for God to speak to us about.”
Just a few of the problems that we run into if we hold a belief in theistic evolution are:
If Adam and Eve were just part of thousands of humans and God just chose them to have fellowship with, then where does that leave the rest of the human or humanesque beings? Did they not have souls? Are we to believe God waited around for evolution to work enough to create people he could ‘work with’ and then he just ignored the rest that didn’t ‘evolve’ enough? Does that sound like God? Is there racial (or otherwise) inferiority between descendants from non-Adam/Eve ancestors? All of humanity coming from Adam and Eve speaks to the unity of humanity. Equality. Unity in both our sin but also in Christ being the second Adam. Through one man came sin and death, through one Man comes forgiveness and redemption. (Rm 5) We lose the original unity of humanity with theistic evolution.
If there was an evolutionary process then there was a lot of violence and death from the origins of the world. Why would God create a world (or the beginnings of a world) with violence and death and declare it ‘very good’? Are we to believe that God saw a world with hurricanes and tornadoes and man-eating sharks and creatures killing each other and thought- what a very good world this is! Or did the first sin bring about a curse on the world? Didn’t eating from the tree bring death? How does theistic evolutionists convincingly explain Scripture stating that death entered the world by one man?
Why would we believe that God would make things right ‘in the end’ if he didn’t even make them right in the beginning? Does theistic evolution provide us with evidence of a good God and hope of a world ‘restored’ —or I guess to them— finally created perfectly?
When we look at the complexity of the human body or things found in nature, the fine-tuning of the universe, are we amazed and say- “Wow! Look at what the matter that God created formed into! How amazing that matter is that it could turn into this! That matter is so wise!” Or do we say, “Wow! Look at what God made. Look how wise and loving God is!”? According to theistic evolution, God only created the matter and sustained the properties, but had no direct influence. How does this portray God?
Scripture tells us that looking at nature provides us with knowledge of the existence of God that is so clear that man is without excuse. If we look at nature and think of the random mutations of evolution, are we reveling in the clear evidence of God? (Rm 1:20) Even if God was part of every mutation, the idea of evolution as the source would obscure the ‘clear’ and obvious knowledge of God. This is incompatible with what Paul tells us.
There are so many biblical passages affirming the historicity of the entire book of Genesis. Are we to think that Paul and Jesus were wrong?
Maybe I’m Wrong
Maybe I’m wrong to reject theistic evolution.
But I keep coming back to this:
I am at the very least left with this conclusion (and I land here too when thinking about predestination and free will): If I’m going to be wrong about something, I’d rather be wrong by giving God too much credit and too much power rather than the alternative.
I’d rather be wrong and be praising God for making every single thing, for creating the world and all that is in it, for forming Adam from the very dust of the ground, for creating a world that was indeed very good without violence or death, than be wrong while believing that God was hands-off in most of creation and just let evolution ‘do it’s thing' no matter what sin and violence accompanied it.
I’d rather be wrong while believing the Bible to be the infallible Word of God as it proclaims for itself and trusting every truth it tells me than be wrong while believing that God’s Word is tainted by sinful beings and therefore not trustworthy to tell us the truth.
“Theistic evolution undermines the glory given to God for his unfathomable wisdom in the creation of all living things, because in theistic evolution no divine intelligence or wisdom beyond the properties present in inanimate matter is required for matter to evolve into all forms of life. In addition, in theistic evolution God does not wisely create various kinds of animals on his first attempt, but clumsily, by his providence, brings about millions of failed mutations in each creature before he finds a beneficial change.”
Conclusion
I think there are a lot of people that hear ‘evolution’ and run the opposite direction- “Let’s not go there. Too controversial. Too abstract. Pointless.” I’ve thought that too. Why rock the boat? Let’s just focus on Jesus and the cross and not worry about the origins of the Earth.
And granted, it’s not where our hope dwells.
But it is not an insignificant topic. As stated before, what is at stake is what you believe about God and what you believe about His Word. These are questions about truth, sin, morality, redemption, and more. And those are no small things.
Can we definitively prove either way that evolution did or did not happen? No. We cannot.
But this book is an academic and compelling explanation that if it doesn’t convince you to abandon theistic evolution, will at least force you to think more about why you believe what you believe and how that influences how you view God and the Bible.
It is not an easy read but it’s an important read.
I cannot do the book justice in a short review. The arguments, evidence, Scriptures, and resources discussed in its pages are far more compelling as they present it than what I’ve detailed here.
I hope my review does not make up your mind for you on what you will believe or reject but will convince you that it’s worth looking into and putting in the work.
If I have not yet been clear, I recommend this book to all people!
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book just released in April, 2022, you may purchase a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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