Is Darwinism compatible with the Bible - No

Couldn’t God have used evolution to do his creating? That question almost invariably arises in discussions on the relation of Christian faith to science.

But a prior and far more interesting question is this: does the process of random mutation and natural selection really have the fabulous creative power usually attributed to it? If not, then the first question loses much of its force. And given that the creative power of natural selection really is being questioned by some perfectly reputable scientists¹, this is certainly not the time for Christians to feel compelled to accept Darwinism as some kind of a ‘given’ that must inevitably control their interpretation of Scripture. We must surely look at the question of the compatibility of Darwinism with Scripture in a much more open manner.

Approaching the issue

On the one hand, we will wish to pay heed to Augustine’s warning that ‘it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics’. On the other hand, we will not wish to accord absolute privilege to a scientific theory, especially one whose empirical findings are so heavily underlain by a materialist metaphysics and worldview.

It must be stressed that the various theories of how to interpret the days of Genesis are not the principal issue. A conflict between Darwinism and Scripture is obviously at its sharpest when the six 24-hour day view of Genesis 1 is adopted, but, as we shall see, questioning the compatibility of Darwinism and Scripture is not restricted to a particular view of the meaning and significance of the Genesis days or of the age of the earth.

A phased creation

It is clear in any reading of Genesis 1 that the text depicts a phased creation, rather than, for example, creation in a single event. God speaks and the stages of creation unfold, culminating in the creation of man ‘in the image of God’ (vv.26-27).

It might be said that there is a parallel here with passages such as Psalm 104, where it is written that God ‘makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind’ (v.3b). For Christians today, the poetic majesty of this description is not contradicted by a modern, scientific understanding of meteorology. We don’t conclude that God has no sovereignty over clouds and wind just because we have a detailed explanation based on atmospheric physics of the mechanism responsible. So can’t we just say that it’s the same with Genesis 1-3 and Darwinism — the former the ‘theological truth’, the latter the ‘scientific truth’, obtained by understanding the description of the process or processes involved in creation?

There are major problems with this view. While it is true that the genre of Genesis 1.1-2.3 is hard to define, in that it displays both poetic and prose-like characteristics, the same cannot be said about Genesis 2.4 onwards, which is written in standard Hebrew narrative. God, having formed the natural world in phases, as yet without blemish or ‘very good’, then formed Adam ‘from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life’ (2.7), finally forming Eve from the body of Adam. The significance of Genesis 2.7 is that the source of humanity’s distinctiveness comes not from the gradual evolution of potentialities from within, as Darwinism maintains, but outside — from God.

Adam and Eve in the NT

But could these narratives perhaps really be ‘theological truth’ rather than ‘historical truth’?

Viewing them through the eyes of the New Testament gives a very clear answer, namely that the warp of the historical basis and the woof of the theological lessons drawn are strongly interwoven². Jesus himself relates the first human couple as occurring in history, when he says in disputing with the Pharisees that ‘at the beginning of creation God made them male and female’ (Mark 10.6). Paul affirms that Eve came from Adam: ‘For man did not come from woman, but woman came from man’ (1 Corinthians 11.8), and repeats the allusion a further twice (1 Corinthians 11.12 and 1 Timothy 2.13). This is clearly in sharp conflict with a Darwinian account of origins. Yet, unless it is to be argued that Paul — and our Lord — misunderstood the genre of Genesis, then surely anyone claiming to follow a high view of Scripture must adopt their view of the relevant narratives in discussing their interpretation.

The Scriptures also clearly teach that Adam and Eve were the progenitors of the entire human race³. Luke’s genealogy of Jesus goes back, not to Abraham as Matthew’s does, but right back to ‘Adam, the Son of God’ (Luke 3.38). And Paul, in his preaching to a pagan audience, says of ‘the God who made the world and everything in it’ (Acts 17.24) that ‘from one man he made every nation of men’ (17.26).

The attempted fusion of the historicity of Adam and Eve with an acceptance of the standard Darwinian account of origins, while well-intentioned, entails painting a very different picture indeed: that ‘God in his grace chose a couple of Neolithic farmers in the Near East... to whom he chose to reveal himself in a special way…’.⁴ These are said to be two individuals among millions of other (evolved) homo sapiens alive at the time, but the first to be homo divinus (a species seemingly known only to theology and not to science). According to this view, some humans (e.g. the Aborigines of Australia) are not descended from Adam and Eve.

But nowhere does Scripture say that God revealed himself to Adam in a special way, among all the millions of other humans then alive. Rather, it tells us how humans came to be in the first place, that God made from one man Ð Adam — every nation of men.

Death and the Fall

The problems of seeking to reconcile Darwinism and Scripture stack up ever more greatly when death and the Fall are considered. What was the scope and effect of the Fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3? Was it (a) all death, including animal and vegetable death; (b) the physical death of humans; (c) the spiritual death of humans; or (d) a combination of (b) and (c)? And was there a disrupting effect on the wider creation?

Three passages from Paul’s letters are relevant. In Romans, he first writes that ‘...sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned’ (Romans 5.12). In a later passage he adds that the creation ‘was subjected to frustration’ (implicitly by God), but that in the age to come this will be reversed when ‘the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay...’ (Romans 8.20,21). Elsewhere Paul clearly states: ‘For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive’ (1 Corinthians 15.21-22).

While the Darwinian account of the evolution of life via death and extinctions is not without its theological problems, it cannot be insisted that Paul definitely had animal and vegetable death in mind as a direct result of the Fall in the above passages. But it is clear that he did have human death in mind. Certainly all evangelicals can agree, whatever their view of Darwinism, that the Fall brought spiritual death to humans — estrangement from God. But what of the origin of the physical death of humans?

It is clear that Paul has both in mind, and in the gospel Christ reverses the effects of spiritual and physical death — which ‘came through a man’, i.e. by the rebellion against the creator in Genesis 3. To redeem humanity, Jesus died a physical death as well as enduring estrangement from God on the cross, and rose physically from the dead. So, because humans were designed with eternity in their hearts, death is not (as animal death may be) natural, but profoundly unnatural. Christ came to redeem what Adam ruined.

And what of the effect on the wider creation? Attempting a fusion of Darwinism with Scripture requires asserting that the Fall had no effect wider than human estrangement from God (devastating though the effects of that undoubtedly are). But surely a wider effect on the whole creation is implied by the language of Romans 8.20-22. Certainly all major commentators maintain that this is so. John Stott is typical when he says that the passage refers to ‘the judgment of God, which fell on the natural order following Adam’s disobedience’.⁵

Defending the faith

Finally, this issue can be looked at pragmatically. If a harmonisation of Darwinism and Scripture, faithful to both, could be achieved, it would certainly lessen the scope for being mocked and ridiculed for one’s Christian faith. But what would it achieve in terms of witness? What would its ‘cash value’ be in apologetic terms?

If there is no difference between atheistic and theistic evolution in terms of the interpretation of scientific evidence, why would an atheist Darwinist be impressed or persuaded by adding God to the picture? As Wayne Grudem has recently written: ‘...when atheists assure us that matter + evolution + 0 = all living things, and then theistic evolutionists answer, no, that matter + evolution + God = all living things, it will not take long for unbelievers to conclude that, therefore, God = 0’.⁶

Dr. Alistair Donald

The author has a doctorate in environmental science.

References
1 E.g. J. Fodor and M. Piattelli-Palmarini, ‘Survival of the Fittest Theory’, New Scientist, February 6 2010, pp.28-31. See also their book, What Darwin got Wrong (Profile, 2010), and also James Le Fanu, Why Us? (Harper Press, 2009). Le Fanu’s main point is that the more science reveals about the most important question a human can ask — What is man and how did he come to be? — the more we have to admit that we don’t know.
2 In the case of the four Gospels, driving a wedge between the historical and the theological in this manner has been profoundly damaging to Christianity. The approach has now been refuted by the best scholarship.
3 It is interesting to note that the findings of modern genetics confirm the inter-relatedness of all modern humans, in contrast to Darwin’s view in The Descent of Man that the various races represent different stages of evolution, with ‘primitive races’ being in an intermediate position along the evolutionary scale from apes to Europeans.
4 Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution: Do we have to choose? (Monarch, 2008), p.236.
5 John R.W. Stott, The Message of Romans (IVP, 1994), p.238.
6 Wayne Grudem, ‘Foreword’ in Norman C. Nevin (ed.) Should Christians Embrace Evolution? (IVP, 2009), p.10.