CREATION OR EVOLUTION - DO WE HAVE TO CHOOSE?
BY DENIS ALEXANDER
The idea that ‘creation' and ‘evolution' represent rival ways of understanding the origins of biological diversity is promoted by two polar opposite groups. Atheists like Richard Dawkins present evolution as a godless materialistic narrative in opposition to the idea of creation. Young earth creationists do the same, but in this case to highlight the actions of God in creation. The polar opposites are at least united in their definitions.
Is there a better way than conflict on this issue? Many leading Christian thinkers at the time of Darwin clearly thought so, welcoming Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) because it brought history into biology, placing renewed emphasis on God's sovereignty over the whole of history, now not only human history, but plant and animal history as well.
The Revd Charles Kingsley wrote to Darwin that your book ‘awes me'. Another Anglican cleric, Aubrey Moore, remarked that ‘Darwinism appeared, and, under the guise of a foe, did the work of a friend'. The Scottish evangelical Henry Drummond, much involved in Gospel missions, maintained that Darwin's theory of natural selection was ‘a real and beautiful acquisition to natural theology'.
These Victorian Christian thinkers received evolution enthusiastically because they had a firm grasp of traditional biblical creation theology, a tradition discussed extensively by Augustine, then by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, and later also by the Reformers such as Calvin. The biblical understanding of creation points to the fact that our great Creator God is the source of all that exists. There is only one great dualism - that between God and everything that exists. Everything that exists only goes on existing because of God's will and power. The biblical doctrine of creation is not mainly about origins, but about ontology, about why things exist.
We are not well served by the common use of the word ‘creation' in the English language because for us it refers to ‘beginnings' and how they happen. But for the biblical writers creation is an ever-present reality: we are living in one. As Paul preached to the Athenians: ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.' [Acts 17:28a]. In Christ all things exist [Colossians 1:17]. ‘The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word'. [Hebrews 1:3a]. We live in a Christological creation in which God is immanent in every aspect of the created order.
As long as we remember both the transcendence and the immanence of God in the created order, then we will have little problem in relating science and faith. Christian creation theology explains why the world is intelligible and therefore how science is possible, because its order and rationality are undergirded by God's will and purposes. The consistent properties of matter and energy are a sign of God's faithfulness.
The role of the scientist is to describe what God does in creation using the language and techniques of science, addressing the question of not ‘why' does God do it, but ‘how' does he do it? Evolution describes how biological diversity comes into being. At heart it is a very simple theory - two key ideas glued together. First, all living organisms contain genomes, the instruction manuals contained in their DNA which make them what they are. Slight variations in the instruction manuals produce slightly different organisms. Second, by the process of natural selection, differential reproductive success ensures that, on average, the genomes building more efficient organisms will be represented with greater frequency in subsequent generations. This mainly gradual process has been continuing for around 3.5 billion years - it needs lots of time - until we have a great ‘bush of life' in which every branch and twig is connected in this grand history.
Just as God works through all the events of history, and through the myriad events in the history of our own individual lives, is it so difficult to believe also that God works through the history of biological life? God is sovereign over the whole bush of life, just as those Christian contemporaries of Darwin remind us.
So there is no need to choose
between creation and evolution, for they are complementary aspects of the same
reality. Evolution describes how God brings about biological diversity in
creation, addressing the question ‘How does God do it?' For answers to the
question ‘Why?' we need to keep reading our Bibles.
Dr Denis Alexander is the Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion (www.faraday-institute.org), St. Edmund's College, Cambridge, where he is a Fellow. Dr Alexander writes, lectures and broadcasts widely in the field of science and religion. Since 1992 he has been Editor of the journal Science and Christian Belief, and currently serves on the National Committee of Christians in Science and as a member of the International Society for Science and Religion.
FURTHER READING
Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution - Do We Have to Choose? Oxford: Monarch, 2008.
Francis S. Collins, The Language of God, London: Free Press, 2006.
Melvin Tinker, Reclaiming Genesis, Oxford: Monarch, 2010.
Source: Prayer for Today
