The Riddle of Theistic Evolution, Part 1

What is Theistic Evolution? The advocate of this doctrine might say that its explanation is simple. The theism implies God; the evolution implies how God brought the universe and all life into being. Is this a fringe religion challenging Christianity’s teachings about special creation? Hardly; Theistic Evolution arose within the very fold of Christianity, championed by well meaning professing Christians frightened in the 19th century by the rise of Darwinian Evolution.

What is Theistic Evolution, really? It isn’t even a compromise between theism (belief in God) and evolution (belief in natural processes); it is total capitulation, complete surrender of the Bible’s veracity and authority to the supposedly infallible realm of what is falsely called knowledge, 1st Timothy 6:20. Why do I describe it in such awful terminology? The concepts are antithetical. Theism, as taught in the Bible, supposes a creative God who brought the present universe and living beings into existence in a more-or-less as-is condition. Evolution (Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian) teach that natural processes produced our universe and all it contains. Evolution neatly does away with God because in an evolutionary cosmology there is no need or room for Him; what the Christian claims God did, time and chance (or mutation, time and chance) did without Him.

Furthermore, it totally undermines the Bible’s account of historical creation. The advocate of Theistic Evolution escapes this unavoidable reality by stating that the Genesis account was never meant to be taken literally, but that the days and nights mentioned are long ages of time. Man was given a spirit when God breathed into our ape-like ancestors and caused them to be “human.” It is ironic that not one Christian exegete of the Bible took this stance regarding Evolution and creation, melding the two into one, prior to the early 19th century. So one must be prompted to inquire: did the exegete discover within the pages of the Bible a truth that millions prior to that time failed to see? Or did such a teacher inject what he believed was truth learned from without the Bible? This is called eisigesis, and it means that you read into Scripture what you want to hear, rather than allowing the Bible to speak for itself.

Let us peer at Genesis chapter one and determine if the language suggests a literal interpretation or figurative language.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light,” Genesis 1:1-3.

The Bible begins with no explanation of God, no defense of His person or existence. He simply was, and He existed before our time/space universe. God created the heavens (Heaven) and the earth. The earth was formless, barren, and shrouded in darkness. This describes our primitive earth, which is equally as old as the universe that houses it. According to stellar evolution the earth was possibly the product of gravitational accretion. This means many smaller pieces of meteoric space debris were drawn together, caught by mutual gravity and formed the earth, and in the beginning (according to evolution) the earth was molten. This is highly contradictory to Genesis 1:6 where it states that the earth was submerged and surrounded by water, being in darkness. Also, the sun and many stars existed long before the earth in evolutionary theory. When the Big Bang happened and the cosmic egg holding the sum of our material universe finally erupted, the gases that were birthed of it coalesced into stars. These stars then exploded over a long period of time, forming other stars and many of the elements the first generation of stars did not possess. Stars preceded the earth by long ages, according to Evolution. The Bible states otherwise:

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also,” Genesis 1:14-16.

Please note that the stars, the sun (itself a star) and the moon were created after the earth according to the Bible. Long generations replacing days and nights or otherwise, the Bible is putting things out of creative order according to Evolution’s schemes. Perhaps God did this intentionally, knowing the folly of this doctrine and how many would appeal to it and succumb to its pseudo-science. I am not presently attempting to prove either creation or Evolution; my only point here is to demonstrate that they are mutually exclusive and incapable of being reconciled. Also, the natural result of this inability to co-mingle is the deduction that one of these cosmologies is wrong. There is no middle ground.

We saw in verse 3 of Genesis that God created light after creating the heavens and the earth. Oxford’s dictionary defines light as a form of energy. Thus God suffused His creation with energy and the result was light. No one, creationist or evolutionist, can explain what light actually is. No one but God. So we see that the order of events thus far is: heavens and earth (in a watery, darkened state) and light. It is light without stars, sun or any natural source we are aware of. Perhaps this was to teach us that God was not hiding what He was going to do. He would leave evidences of the creation in plain sight for those who were looking for them.