Adams and Atoms: A TE foray through Scripture and Science.

("Adams" is intentional. Didn't you ever read Romans 5? )

I've often found difficulty when describing myself as a theistic evolutionist, a TE. A lot of times, we TEs throw big words and difficult concepts at each other with abandon. This is fine, but at the same time there needs to be a different approach to talking about TEism, an approach for the common man, using simple words and simple sentences and everyday examples to illustrate ideas which may not be everyday ideas.

So that's why I'm starting this thread. It is intended as a logical collection of articles describing TEism, what goes into it, and what comes out of it.

One important thing to note is that I will not be answering creationist hot-button questions like "Isn't the god of evolution cruel?" and "Doesn't the Bible outright say that the earth is young?", at least not directly and specifically. Part of the problem is that we TEs often state our views in the form of answering to creationists' questions, which can hamper a proper exposition. TEism would exist even if there were no creationists bugging it and I want to show how it exists as a coherent, logical framework of thought all on its own. Also, I would hope that creationists' input be similarly structured. This is not a thread for my benefit or yours but for the benefit of those standing on the sidelines, so don't type to convince me: type to convince them, and present your ideas logically and consistently. On an aside, I won't be dealing so much with the scientific proofs for evolution, so I hope creationists won't talk too much about the scientific rebuttals against evolution either. I want to focus more on "if evolution is a given, what do Christians do with it?"

Also, I won't give specific answers to those niggling questions like "Do evolutionists really believe that Adam was completely fictional?" Some do, some don't. What I am presenting is ( I hope) the lowest common denominator among TEs, a framework, onto which they peg their individual ideas and beliefs. But if other TEs want to present particular aspects of their specific beliefs which they feel I may have missed out on, feel free to! Only note the above: this thread isn't for the benefit of the posters, it's for the benefit of those who want to read to understand TEism.

So that's that for the preface! (The nice thing about posting in a thread is that people are forced to read the preface until something new comes along. ) We'll get down to business soon enough.

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Well I can get started I guess...

When I look at the early parts of Genesis, I do not believe it was written to be literal history. First, the order of creation is different between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2... Genesis 1 is, IMO, an allegorical creation account from the Creator's perspective and it's focus is on our ontological origin not an exhaustive listing of the biological or empirical processes that brought us about...

Genesis 2 is focused on creation from the creatures perspective and it's truth statements are in the allegory. It shows our relationship with each other, all of creation, and God. It describes in an allegorical fashion the origin of "evil" -- freedom. I also don't see one "fall" but an interconnected string of falls starting in Eden and going through Cain and Abel, the flood, to the Tower of Babel etc... Whether or not those events literally happened is inconsequential because it is how we apply those lessons to our faith and our current life that really matters...

In the end, for me, the Bible is not a history book or a science book but a book of faith. As a book of faith about our God it is 100% true...

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“This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy. My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love –outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion." -- Thomas Merton

Alright. I am a creationist, but I do see evolution as a valid scientific theory. And I have a few questions, not to attack, I'm just wanting to understand your logic.

How do you determine what is to be interpreted literally (in the Bible) and what is not?

What about sin? How does that effect all of mankind?

Is it possible for evolution to be a plausable, but incorrect theory.

I'm just looking at this from the angle that the Bible is 100% God's word, as opposed to a man- made theory?

The topic of "knowing God", of course, is a weighty, difficult and profound topic. And in saying what I am about to say here I know I will touch many nerves. I am not going to suggest that you all know God any less than I do. But I will simply present what I believe about knowing God, particularly in the framework of the cr-evo controversy. The reason I have to lay this groundwork is because without it, it can be very difficult to understand pat responses like this:

Creationist: I'm just looking at this from the angle that the Bible is 100% God's word, as opposed to a man- made theory?
Plausible TE terse response: The Word of God is Jesus, not a book.

Now, to jump in:

How can God reveal Himself?

God is a personal God. And how do we know another person? By interacting with them, talking and walking daily with them, seeing how they live. In the same way, we can only know God if we can interact with God, talk and walk daily with God, and see how God "lives".

This is the level of knowledge and familiarity which humanity had with God before the advent of sin, as described in the account of Genesis 2 where Adam, Eve, and God are represented as living together harmoniously in community in the Garden of Eden. However, come Genesis 3, the introduction of sin removes this relationship between humanity and God. From then on humanity can only see God "dimly, as through a mirror". It is as if humanity has packed up and moved out of God's house.

So how does God reveal Himself to a people who have fled from Him? How does God become known to a people who don't want to know Him? By becoming one of us, in the Incarnation. Within our fallenness we cannot apprehend the Father directly, but we can know the Father through the Son and the Son through the witness of the Holy Spirit. Because of the identity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as God within the Trinity, we know that whatever is revealed of the Son is true also of the Father. As such, Jesus is the definitive revelation of God.

Followed my explanation? You should have noticed that something is missing here: I didn't say a word about the Bible. I quoted from it, but I didn't say anything about how it reveals God.

That was deliberate.

I asked "how can God reveal Himself?", and it is a valid question, because God is infinitely perfect and just and holy and loving. God is Who He is, the great I AM. And it is precisely because of this that God can only reveal Himself fully through the Incarnation, by sending the Son in our form to live with us and reveal the Father in our midst through His life, death, and resurrection.

Now, is there any other way? Could God have revealed Himself fully through the Bible? What the Bible is, ultimately, is a collection of words. Whatever your position on the Bible - inspired, infallible, inerrant - you still have to acknowledge that the Bible is ultimately a collection of words. Now, don't get me wrong. Words are good things, powerful things, and Jesus even described Himself as The Word - because what a word does, ultimately, is to communicate something, and Jesus was the ultimate communication of who God is.

But can a collection of words, the Bible, be God's ultimate revelation? I don't believe so. And I will elaborate on what I mean later on. Until then, trust me that I am not really a Bible-burner in disguise.

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Thank you for your inquiring spirit

Several considerations are important:
1. The literary style and structure of the passage
2. The context of the passage: cultural, historical and literary
3. The inferred or explicit intent of the author
4. The understanding which the original readers are expected to have derived from the passage

and so on.

Mankind has been universally sinful from its very first generation -- all Christians agree with this whether they are YEC, OEC or TE. We just differ as to when that first generation occurred (1 million years ago vs. 100,000 years ago vs. 6000 years ago), and we differ as to whether Genesis 3 tells a literal or a metaphorical story. But we all agree that Genesis 3 is a true statement about the human condition.

Yes.

So do many (if not most) TEs. We also believe that the Bible, and Genesis, are inspired teaching from God.

How would one tell when "man" first appeared? Wouldn't there be more than just one man and one woman?

Why are Gen 1 and 2 not interpreted literally?

I'm going to focus mainly on the internal reasons why I think that would be a mistake.


Genesis 1:1-2:3

This passage uses a very different style of writing than what follows; indeed, it is without match in the entire Bible. Probably the closest literary parallel to this section is Revelation 6 and 8:1-5 which describe the seven seals (or the later accounts of the seven trumpets and seven bowls). One account uses a framework of days, the other uses a framework of seals. Both accounts use a repeated phrase to describe the seven items (the phrase varies slightly on the first and seventh days, and all but the second through fourth seals). Both accounts set off the seventh item as special. Both accounts portray God's actions from his dwelling place (through speech or through the breaking of seals on a document) as dramatically affecting our world. Both describe events that had not been witnessed by humans at the time of writing (John witnessed the vision, but not the actual events). In both accounts, the degree of literal description is highly debated.

There are other reasons not to presume that this passage is a historical account. It describes the same one-time event on both days 1 and 4: the separation of light (called day) from darkness (called night). It uses anthropomorphism to describe the sun and moon as ruling day and night. It completely ignores describing anything that would contradict the science of its time: no hint is given to the size of the sun, moon or stars, or to the fact that the earth is roughly spherical, and the idea of a firmament fits perfectly with what was then known. While these things can be reconciled with what we now know, the account does not in any way reveal what humans would later discover in these areas.

Another major reason is that the days are arranged in a way that creates symmetry between the actions on the first three days (forming light, sky and seas, dry land covered with vegetation) and the second three days (filling light with luminaries, sky and seas with birds and fish, dry land with animals and humans). This symmetry is only present because of the specific elements the author chose to focus on. If the creation of angels, bacteria, seaweed and hell were also included, the current symmetric arrangement would break. Because of this, it is unlikely that the symmetry is due to the way God actually created, but was rather made by the inspired author in how he chose to describe certain aspects of God's creation.

Finally, the days in this account serve a purpose other than history. They also set the template for the work week and Sabbath. While this alone does not show that the days are not also historical, it does explain why a framework of days would be used even if the days were not historical.

All these reasons are based on the text itself. Even if creation itself in no way contradicted the order of creation shown in Genesis 1, there would still be many reasons to not take the account as historical. Indeed, that is why the days were suggested to be figurative at least as far back as Augustine -- long before any scientific reason for such an idea existed.


Genesis 2:4-4:26

This account reads far more like a historical account than the preceding chapter. But, it still has some significant differences, especially in the first two chapters. Most glaring is the fact that two trees are given magic properties. The tree of life is able to convey immortality to the one who eats from it, and this power appears to be inherent in the tree, rather than coming from God. Indeed, God removes the humans from the garden so they cannot eat from this tree, rather than just altering or removing the tree. Because of the way this tree and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are portrayed, it appears that they may be metaphorical. The tree of life represents God's sustaining power. Adam and Eve had access to this while they were in the garden (so they would not die), but were removed from it when they sinned. The tree is a tangible, physical representation of something we cannot physically see.

The form of story that uses these type of metaphors is called a fable. A fable is not a fib, but rather a story that explains something true -- often something supernatural -- by using natural objects to represent more than they naturally are. Aside from the magic trees, there is also the talking serpent. Unlike Balaam's donkey that was made to talk when "the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey" (Numbers 22:28), the serpent talks because it "was more crafty than any other beast of the field" (Genesis 3:1). Because this unusual occurrence is not attributed to a miracle or other supernatural event, but rather to craftiness, it lends support to the idea that the story is told in the form of a fable.

A similar case, though not a fable, can be found in Isaiah 51:9-10. This passage describes God's power in the exodus and specifically in crossing the Red Sea. In it, the power of Egypt is personified as Rahab (see also Isaiah 30:7), a mythical god of the sea. The use of this kind of metaphor does not mean the event did not really happen, but neither does it mean that Rahab is a real god or a real dragon. The event did happen, but Isaiah 51:9-10 uses more evocative imagery to describe it than the description in Exodus. Similarly, Genesis 2-3 uses non-literal imagery (including magic trees and talking animals) to describe the creation and fall of humanity. I believe that a more prosaic description of the same fall can be found in Romans 1:18-32.

Why isn't the TEism god the god-of-the-gaps?

Probably because most TEs have thought about god-of-the-gaps theology and have rejected it. It won't always be so. At some point, society will view opposition to evolution in the same way it views geocentricity, now. At that point, "theistic evolutionist" will be redundant for Christians, and many will consider evolution to be the "plain reading" of Scripture. There will be new and different sciences supplanting our sciences (probably making special cases of most of them), and there will be many TEs who feel threatened by them because they implicitly subscribe to a god-of-the-gaps mentality.

But today, Christians who accept evolution have generally done so because they have rejected any sort of god-of-the-gaps.

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Looks like to me that TE is nothing but god-of-the-gaps so I don't see why you think they've rejected it. What do you think God did, in the creation process, and why?