Is Darwinism compatible with the Bible - Yes

I’ve been asked to answer the question of our title by dealing specifically with how Christians ought to understand Genesis 1-11.

My contention is that, properly understood, these chapters neither support nor contradict Darwinism understood purely scientifically, because their primary meaning is theological. They leave the way open for Christians to develop an understanding of Darwinism compatible with this theology.

Basic principles

God is revealed most fully in a particular person, Jesus, who lived at a particular time in a particular culture. This was the culmination of God’s ‘incarnational’ method of self-revelation in which God’s word came clothed in the words of particular people, using particular languages and particular forms of literature, all rooted in the history and culture of a particular nation. We must take this seriously when interpreting the Bible. Instead of assuming that we know how a part of the Bible should be read, we must ask some basic questions to guide our interpretation.

* What kind of language is being used?
* What kind of literature is it?
* What is the expected audience?
* What is the purpose of the text?
* What relevant extra-textual knowledge is there?

What kind of language?

Many people today read Genesis 1-11 with preconceived ideas of what kind of text it is. They unthinkingly adopt the prevalent secular modernist view that truth can only really be expressed in ‘scientific’ prose and are suspicious of figurative prose.

Early Christian scholars didn’t have this bias. They read Genesis 1-11 looking for clues in the text to tell them how to read it. This respects the authority of the text rather than imposing the reader’s authority on it by assuming how it should be read. In the 5th century Augustine concluded: ‘Sacred Scripture in its customary style is speaking with the limitations of human language in addressing men of limited understanding’.

Writing over a millennium later, Calvin develops this recognition that God ‘accommodates’ his way of speaking to the common language and idioms of the day and people’s pre-scientific understanding. Commenting on Genesis 1.6-8, he says: ‘For, to my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. Here the Spirit of God would teach all men without exception and therefore … the history of creation … is the book of the unlearned’. He concluded that, when speaking of the material world, the Bible describes things as people see them, using ‘the language of appearance’, not as they might actually be. He therefore had no problems with things which tie modern ‘literalists’ in knots. Calvin knew that the Hebrew word in Genesis 1.6-8 which the Authorised Version translates as ‘firmament’ (meaning something solid) means something made of beaten-out metal. That the Hebrews thought of the heavens as solid is clear in Job 37.18.

Then there is the fact that both the sun and the moon are described as ‘lights’, meaning self-luminous entities, when in reality the moon is only a reflector, a mirror. Calvin also comments that the details given of the location of Eden indicate that Noah’s flood didn’t cause a significant change in the geography of the ancient Near East (contrary to modern ‘flood geology’). The impression that the flood, doubtless an historical event, was a universal event arises in part because the Hebrew word erets is translated as ‘earth’ (implying the planet) when it could be given its more usual meaning of ‘land’ (a specific locality).

What kind of literature?

The third-century scholar Origen found in Genesis 1 a clear clue that it is figurative literature in that there are three days with morning and evening, one of which (day one) doesn’t even have a heaven, before the sun and moon are created. Not recognising this clue leads modern ‘literalists’ into all kinds of speculations not grounded in the text.

For centuries Christian and Jewish scholars have seen Genesis 1.1-2.4 as an extended ‘figure of speech’ in which God is depicted as a worker doing a carefully planned week’s work. The earth is created initially ‘shapeless and empty’. In the first three days God shapes it through acts of separation, creating empty spaces. In the second three days God creates things to fill the spaces. The acts on day four correspond to the spaces created on day one, those on day five to the spaces created on day two and those on day six to the spaces created on day three. At the end of each day God surveys his work and declares it ‘a good job’. At the end of day six, he says that what he has created is ‘very good’. He rests on day seven and hallows it.

This isn’t a chronological, scientific account of creation intended to answer our 21st-century scientific questions. It’s a theological account asserting fundamental truths which we cannot list here. Origen found in the anthropomorphic language of Genesis 2-3 the clue that this is to be read as a figurative account of human origins, not a literal one. We can add that we now know that it is full of symbolic features found in ancient Near Eastern accounts of creation: the garden, the Tree of Life, the serpent, humans made of clay and a divine element.

What kind of audience?

These were ancient Hebrews and, as already stressed, we ought initially to read the text through their eyes. Another example of the difference this makes to our understanding concerns the genealogies, which ‘literalists’ use to construct a chronology. There is a striking parallel to the overall pattern of Genesis 1-11 in the Sumerian ‘king lists’. In these there are eight to ten kings, each with very lengthy reigns, before the flood. There are then more kings with reigns of decreasing length. A post-flood king, En-Mebaragisi, is said to have reigned for 900 years. Other evidence shows that he was a real person who reigned for a normal time. Clearly numbers in this culture could be used with a symbolic, rather than literal, meaning.

What is the text’s purpose?

Biblical scholars now see the creation story as a piece of theological polemic, setting out the Hebrew understanding of creation over against the ideas prevalent in the pagan religions of their time. Much could be said about this.

An obvious point is the story’s monotheism. The other ancient Near Eastern stories begin with ‘theogony’, the origin of the gods. One of them then brings the cosmos into being, using pre-existing ‘matter’ of some kind. In Genesis there is only one God, the Creator of all else that exists. It is about ‘cosmogony’, the origin of the cosmos. God’s existence is assumed.

Why are the sun and moon called ‘lights’ when there are common Hebrew words for sun and moon? Because for pagans the words ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ are also the names of gods they worshipped. Genesis 1.14-19 attacks such worship. The heavenly bodies are simply ‘lights’ (like big oil lamps!) created by Israel’s God. Humans don’t exist to serve these ‘gods’; rather, they serve humans, as light sources and calendar markers.

Compatible with Darwinism?

Augustine and Basil of Caesarea didn’t understand the words, ‘Let the earth/waters bring forth …’ as commands obeyed instantaneously and once-for-all, but (as the Hebrew verb-form used allows) as God giving the material elements the permission and power to bring forth new life forms down through the course of time. Calvin believed in animal death before the Fall, otherwise why did God give them plants to eat and how would Adam have known what death meant? Only humans had access to the Tree of Life. This doesn’t contradict the statements that the creation was ‘good’. The primary meaning of the Hebrew word used is ‘fit for purpose’. If God’s purpose included animal death from the beginning, we must accept that. The 2nd-century theologian Irenaeus understood God’s purpose as being to provide humans with a challenging environment in which to develop. Adam and Eve were morally innocent and immature and were intended to grow to maturity in this environment, meeting the challenges depending on God (cf. Hebrews 5.8-9).

Before Darwinism scholars had concluded that in the Bible death as a consequence of sin applies to humans alone. They also recognised that ‘death’ for humans in the Bible often refers to a spiritual state, a diminished existence cut off from God, not the end of physical existence (e.g. John 5.24; 8.51). This makes sense in Genesis 2-3, otherwise God’s threat, ‘In the day you eat of it you shall surely die’, proves an empty one. Calvin understood Cain’s fear of being killed to mean that humans other than Adam and Eve existed at the time. God elected Adam and Eve as representative ‘federal heads’ of the race whose actions affected the rest through a spiritual, not physical, solidarity. This fits with Romans 5, where our solidarity in Christ is spiritual, not physical. It suggests a basis for thinking of God bringing homo sapiens into being by an evolutionary process and endowing a representative pair with God’s image (a spiritual, not physical, quality).

These kinds of considerations provide a basis for a theology of ‘theistic evolution’. Because ‘all truth is God’s truth’ Augustine and Calvin held that Christians cannot ignore truth from outside the Bible in doing theology. Many today find the scientific evidence for evolution compelling and therefore cannot ignore it in their theology, based on a figurative reading of Genesis which is firmly rooted in traditional Christian orthodoxy.

The Rev. Dr. Ernest Lucas is Vice-Principal and Tutor in Biblical Studies, Bristol Baptist College, and has doctorates in both science and biblical studies.