What exactly is the source of the conflict between evolutionists and creationists?
Well, the evolutionists look at their evidence and see the interpreters of biblical text ignoring what seems clear to them: a long progression from simple life to more complex. And the biblical interpreters see the secularists ignoring what is obvious from their evidence: God’s creation and a special human creation.
And these two evidences ARE difficult to reconcile. After all, if one believes in a single creator, all knowing and all powerful, then it makes no sense that there would be a progression of creation over time. And if one believes in a natural progression, when why should human creation not be a part of the same progression, and if the process can be seen as natural, why claim that God is involved in the process at all—it simply is not necessary to determine the facts.
Is there a way to pull together these claims? Yes, if one looks at both sets of evidence, but doing so requires some release of favorite interpretations. It means that we, as theologians, must look at the fossil record fairly for what it says. That the earth truly is old, and that there is a progression. Is there any hint of this in the biblical text? And, in fact, there is a hint, although not easy to find.
Psalm 74 says:
God is my king from of old, Who works deeds of deliverance in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You broke open springs and torrents; You dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, Yours also is the night; You have prepared the light and the sun.
17 You have established all the boundaries of the earth; You have made summer and winter.
This is an ancient interpretation of Genesis 1. It describes the creation event as being an act of war against Leviathan and sea monsters, which the earth had to be delivered from. This indicates not only that the earth already existed, but that some kind of creatures already existed on it. That there may have been a creation before the Genesis 1 account.
And this makes sense. After all, the Genesis 1 creation begins with the earth already existing and it being covered with ocean. Interestingly enough, this is the same state of affairs in Genesis 8, after the flood in which God “delivers” the earth from the mass of humanity who had become too violent. Thus, a creation event could very well be a wiping of a previous creation and the creating of a new one. The biblical record, then speaks of two of these events.
It just so happens, that the fossil record also speaks of a “wiping out” of species. In fact, there are indications of five mass extinctions in the fossil record, followed by a heightened period of new species being developed. The complexification of species does not exclusively in this period, but it certainly increases. Thus it is possible that both science and theology can agree upon various periods of destruction and re-creation.
I'm lost. Or missing something. Gen. 1 "In the beginning" -seems to say that the earth was void, not already existing as earth. Why (even considering literary genres) make the most obvious interpretation more complex? I wonder why we would have any need to make it more complex esp. after seeing a documentary where former scientists who were evolutionists could no longer believe in it after looking at the facts available to them as scientists.
ReplyDeleteBecause what you consider "obvious" isn't the actual meaning-- although it is helpful, because I could never understand how someone could get a young earth idea out of Gen 1:2. "Void" doesn't mean "nothing", but "chaotic" or "pointless" or "without use" , which is why the joining word is "formless". The earth was there, it was just a mess. "Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit was moving over the surface of the waters" means that the ocean covered the earth, but God's spirit was there, over it.
ReplyDeleteThis is confirmed by the rest of Gen 1, which doesn't ever talk about God forming the planet earth, but moving the waters back and allowing the land to be exposed. The land was already there, and the waters were already there. God didn't create them at the time of Genesis 1.
Obviously, God did create the land and the sea, but not in Genesis 1. So He had to do it some other time. That's where Psalm 74 comes in.
Again, I'm not trying to make it complex. I'm reading the Bible for what it says, and it's complex. I think what Christian "creationists" do to science is incredibly more complex and anti-intuitive.