Among the scientificstatements, C1 (ancient, changing earth and universe) is also accepted byold-earth creationists. C2 opts tolimit the descent of living things (on earth, at least) to a single commonancestor, which, while rather characteristic, does not seem to be necessary totheistic evolution. Regarding C3,a model may have great explanatory power and be effective in generatinghypotheses, yet not be the whole story. Atheistic evolutionists make a similar claim over against theisticevolution. C4 leads us into thequestion of filling gaps, which we will examine by and by.

Having now spent some timethinking about varieties of theistic evolution, let’s see if we can puttogether a general definition:

Theisticevolution is a view of origins inwhich God used providential means such as mutation and natural selection as theprime or only means for producing the diversity of living things on earth.

Some varieties of theisticevolution would include diversity on the matters of (1) whether original lifewas created miraculously or providentially, (2) whether there were one or moredistinct forms of original life, and (3) whether or not there really was anoriginal pair of humans, Adam and Eve.

By contrast, we can thensuggest a parallel definition of special creation as follows:

Specialcreation is a view of origins in whichGod used miraculous intervention as the prime or only means for producing thediversity of living things on earth.

Whether or not one likesthese definitions, they permit us to view theistic origin models as a kind ofspectrum, with the extreme views using only the one means and the moderateviews using the relevant means as the prime means. Most views held by various Christians will fallsomewhere between the two extremes.

Another approach would be todefine theistic evolution and special creation so that they are not mutuallyexclusive. For instance:

Theisticevolution is a view of origins inwhich God used providential means such as mutation and natural selection as ameans for producing the diversity of living things on earth.

Specialcreation is a view of origins inwhich God used miraculous intervention as a means for producing the diversityof living things on earth.

In this case the extreme positions would be “pure theisticevolution” and “pure special creation” and the intermediate positions wouldinvolve a mixture of the two means.

Scientific Problems for Theistic Evolution

Let us begin with scientific problems that face theisticevolution. Being a theist myself,I do not find any insuperable problem with the idea that God might be behindthe various phenomena studied under evolution. I will not here attempt to deal with problems which atheistswould bring against the view. These are often (but not always) the same as those an atheist would urgeagainst theism in general, and they are largely philosophical and theologicalin nature. Instead, I want to lookat items we could call scientific that are problematic for one or another ofthe various forms of theistic evolution over against forms of specialcreation. Or, using our alternativedefinitions, problems for more providential forms of theistic evolution overagainst more miraculous ones.

Transitional Fossils

The first problem is that ofthe relative scarcity of fossils that can reasonably be considered intermediateor transitional between the major categories of the biological classificationsystem.

In any model in which therehas been the sort of change over time that we call descent through commonancestry, one would expect numerous transitions between the earlier forms ofliving things and the currently existing ones. Darwin’s original model proposed that the changes whichoccur are very small, necessitating many intermediate steps between organismswhich are even moderately different. Employing the idea of natural selection, Darwin suggested that theintermediates would eventually be eliminated through competition with theirdescendants (and surviving ancestor-forms), so that by later times large gapswould have developed between the various kinds of living organisms. But the fossil ensemble itself, being arecord of this history of life, should be nearly continuous through time.

Darwin was aware that thefossil sequence was not continuous. His solution to this problem was to suggest that the fossil record isvery fragmentary. There isobviously some sense in which this is true. At least for land-based life, only a tiny fraction of theorganisms which once lived get preserved by fossilization. On the other hand, marine life,particularly those sorts having hard body parts not soluble in water, wouldpresumably leave a pretty complete record. But in any case, the actual fossils that do survive do notappear to be an imperfect record of the sort of gradual process Darwin envisioned.

This actual fossil record wasapparently one of the reasons driving a shift from the original model of Darwin¾ in which allpopulations are slowly evolving ¾ to the view found in neo-Darwinism, that reallysignificant changes take place only in small, isolated population groups. Here the isolation can help avoid a newmutation being swamped by the old version. The small size of the population makes it more likely that astatistical fluke may help an innovation gain ascendancy in the population. So far, so good. The real problem comes when oneconsiders a change that will take many mutations to accomplish. The chance of getting a second (third,forth …) good mutation in this small population is nil compared to getting itin the original large population, so one must wait until the small populationhas grown and spread to become really big before there is any real chance oftaking the next step. For thehigher categories in the biological classification scheme, the separationsbetween categories are hundreds or thousands of mutations, so we should havehundreds or thousands of large intermediate populations which are nearly ascapable of leaving fossils as their ancestors and descendants. This we don’t see, and it is ascientific problem for all forms of gradualistic evolution, whether theistic ornot.

Partly as a result of thisproblem, Gould and Eldridge proposed a version of evolution they callpunctuated equilibrium. In thismodel, the transition from one form to another is quite rapid ¾ “punctuated” ¾ to account for the sudden appearance of new forms inthe fossil record. Among these newforms, the ones which survive to produce evidence in the fossil record arethose in equilibrium (internally and externally) so that they do not tend tochange, producing the observed phenomenon called “stasis.”

The problem facing thepunctuated equilibrium view is similar to that facing evolution by largemutations ¾ the chance of getting something functional is astronomicallyminuscule. This model, however,could work rather well as a form of theistic evolution. It does fit the fossil record. A mind guiding the process could easilyproduce results one would never expect in a mindless universe. I commend this alternative to those whoare theistic evolutionists, though I am not inclined to call it theisticevolution myself. In any case,this is something that should easily be distinguishable empirically(statistically) from atheistic evolution, and the arguments of Gould andEldridge (and earlier, Goldschmidt) suggest that it is.

For versions of theisticevolution that have God using random processes, the problem remains. The only way of crossing from oneviable form to another (that are, say, 10 mutations apart) is by means of arandom walk. A random walk is aprocess by which an object moves through space randomly, taking steps of eitherfixed or variable length in random directions. The illustration popularized by George Gamow is that of adrunk trying to find his way home.[14] Starting from a convenient lamppost, hetakes a step in a random direction. His next step is in another random direction. The question is, how far from the lamppost would the drunkbe expected to be after N steps? If the average (or root mean square) length of the drunk’s step is L,then his expected distance from the lamppost will be D = LxSQRT(N). This same result holds for movement inany number of dimensions, for distances are still measured using an extensionof Pythagoras’ theorem.

Let us assume for simplicitythat all the mutations are the same length L. To cross a distance equivalent to the length of 10mutations, D = 10L. Then SQRT(N) =10 and N = 100, so it will take 100 mutation steps on average to move thisdistance. One can immediately seethat it takes much longer to cross a gap by random walk than by a guided walk.

Applying random walk toevolutionary changes, the space in which the movement takes place is not thedrunk’s two-dimensional sidewalk nor our physical three-dimensional space, butsome multi-dimensional phase space of functional characteristics. In a one-dimensional space, movement isalong a straight line, so that after the 100 random steps one is on averageabout 10 steps from the start, but this may either be in the right direction orthe wrong direction for the needed transition. Thus there is only one chance in two that 100 steps willcross the gap. For atwo-dimensional phase space, the problem is much worse ¾ in fact, insuperable if we imagine the target is apoint. Expanding the target to acircle (say, 1 mutation is radius), there is less than one chance in thirtythat 100 steps will take us to the right destination. For a three-dimensional phase space, the chance drops toless than one chance in 400, and thereafter the chances decrease approximatelyby a power of ten for each added dimension. Random walk is not a very efficient way to get from oneplace to another! More to thepoint, it must leave an enormous number of transitional fossils behind. These we don’t see in the fossilrecord.

Irreducible Complexity

Michael Behe, in his book Darwin’sBlack Box, has popularized the phrase“irreducible complexity.”[15] By this he means that living thingscontain numerous organs, structures, processes and reactions which havecomponent parts that appear to be useless unless all are present together. If one part is missing, the function isgone.

Behe’s illustration is thetraditional mouse trap, which consists of a wooden platform to hold the parts,the hammer to get the mouse, the spring to drive the hammer, the arm to holdback the hammer, the trigger to release the arm and hammer, and various staplesto attach the parts to the platform. If any of these parts is missing, the device won’t catch mice. Some sort of bait (cheese, bacon,peanut butter) is also desirable if one wishes to catch mice without waitingfor them to blunder into the trigger by chance, but this is not absolutelynecessary and so is not a part of the mouse trap’s irreducible complexity.

Behe suggests that a similarphenomenon is found in living organisms. He gives as examples the rotary motor that the drives the flagellum inthe E. coli bacterium, thechemical processes that initiate vision and blood clotting, and the intracelltransport system. Behe’s point isthat such systems apparently have no survival value until the whole has beenassembled, and thus a series of coordinated mutations is needed to produce anysuch structures, the sort of thing that random processes are notoriouslyunlikely to provide. It is, ofcourse, possible to claim that each needed intermediate step must have some survival value, we just don’t know what itis. That is possible. It is also aform of the “God of the gaps” argument. It is equally possible that all junk DNA has some function which wehaven’t found yet, or that all vestigial organs have some current function sothat they are not really vestigial. We shall return to this question by and by when we discuss the “God ofthe gaps.” In any case, thisphenomenon of irreducible complexity is explained more easily, it seems to me,by a sudden intervention to assemble such structures, or by the sort of guidedprovidence that would (again) show up empirically under thoroughinvestigation. Thus, irreduciblecomplexity points to a more likely explanation by some sort of old-earth creationismor a theistic evolution that leaves tracks.

Shape of the Fossil Record

A third type of scientificproblem for theistic evolution is what we might call the “shape” of the fossilrecord. Darwinian evolution (andindeed, the neo-Darwinian and punctuated equilibrium versions also) buildsdiversity progressively. Onebegins with small diversity, and large diversity arises late in theprocess. Thus an original lifeform consists of a single type, which over time gradually diversifies until itsvarious varieties become distinct species, some of these species diverge enoughto become separate genera, some of the genera diversify to families, and so on,up to the level of phyla. Theresult should be that the various phyla are the last categories to be formed inthe history of life. Withoutgetting into nitpicking over the exact definition of the various levels in thebiological classification system, in the Darwinian scheme life should form asort of single tree.

As a matter of fact, thefossil record pictures life as something like a large series of bushes, withthe major body plans for the animals all being formed in the brief period knownas the Cambrian Explosion. This,again, looks much more like some sort of intervention (or at least rapid, guidedevolution) than it does like a slow, random process of small mutations.

Natural Law and Mediation

What is natural law? Nobody knows, at least no one down hereon earth. For atheists (secularhumanists, naturalists, materialists), it must be some sort of structure thatallows the universe to have organization, but the existence of which is finallyinexplicable. For theists, twosuggestions have been made. (1) Itis the way God normally acts, and has no real separate existence of itsown. (2) It is some sort ofcreated structure, to which God has given certain capabilities.

Do we as Christians knowwhich of these theistic alternatives is correct? I don’t think so. How would we decide? I knowof no way from within the universe that we could do any experiment to make achoice between the two. The answeris thus going to be obtained from some sort of philosophical or theologicalargument, from some biblical hints, or from eschatological verification. My own inclination is that (2) iscorrect.

Actually, it doesn’t matterfor our concern. The Bible andtheology (and philosophy) still distinguish between God’s providential activityand his miraculous activity, whether God’s providential actions are mediatedthrough a created natural law structure or not. The Bible uses the distinctive Greek terms dunamis,thauma, semeion, and teras in the New Testament, and similar terms in OldTestament Hebrew, to designate miraculous events. They are thus seen as “powerful, amazing, significant” or“wondrous” over against normal events which, while under God’s control, do notcarry their significance on their sleeve, so to speak.

Much of our debate betweenold-earth creation and theistic evolution (and even among the various versionsof theistic evolution) revolves around the question of distinguishingprovidential from miraculous events; and more particularly, of inferring theone or the other for events at which no human observer was present. Though perhaps not all miracles couldbe characterized by discontinuity, this seems to me to be one ratherdistinctive marker that separates most providential events from most miraculousones. Though God turns water intowine every summer, to do so in a few moments in a stone jar without the aid ofa grapevine is pretty discontinuous in some sense.

Now science studies thestructures and events in nature in an attempt to discover natural laws whichgovern these phenomena. Naturalevents will presumably operate continuously on some scale, so that a scientisttends to fill all gaps with interpolations which are as smooth as possible. Butactual observations are discontinuous, a series of discrete dips into thestream of nature. How do we tellwhen we have correctly or incorrectly filled a gap in the data, whether bypostulating the correct continuity or the actual miracle which has occurred, orby mistakenly postulating a continuity (or a wrong continuity) or a miraclewhen none has occurred?

Every human being isconstantly filling gaps in his or her experience, either with naturalexplanations or with miracles ¾ with a God of the gaps or with a natural law of thegaps. Only those who postulatethat miracles don’t occur can be sure that a natural law explanation is theright one. And only those who denynatural phenomena can be certain that a miracle is the right explanation,though I seriously doubt anyone holds this view.

I believe we are correct inseeing miracles as much rarer phenomena than providential events. It does not follow that the rightmethodology (a la Hume) is to go with providence in every case. Nor, I think, should we flip a coin, orspin a pointer whose dial is weighted to what we think is the relativelikelihood of providence and miracle. Instead we look for clues that point to the one or the other, or (morelikely) treat providence as the default explanation in the absence of markersfor the miraculous. What are thesemarkers for the miraculous? Ithink the biblical terms for miracle give us some insight. Events which are sufficiently powerful,amazing, significant or wondrous are presumably miraculous. The stinger is “sufficiently.” How powerful, amazing, significant orwondrous need an event be to qualify? The work of Bill Dembski and Mike Behe is helpful here.[16] If the event is powerful, amazing,significant or wondrous enough that a miraculous intervention looks like abetter explanation than does a natural phenomenon, then that’s the way weshould go. Our methodology shouldbe inference to the best explanationrather than simply using a fixed rule to plug gaps.

Theological Problems for Theistic Evolution

We turn now to theologicalproblems facing theistic evolution, under which we include exegetical andhermeneutical problems.

Exegesis of Genesis 1: theOrigin of Living Things

It seems to me that Genesis 1(understood from an old-earth perspective) presents no problems for some sortof theistic evolution of living things. The land produces vegetation, the waters teem with living creatures, thebirds fly in the sky, the land produces living creatures ¾ all in response to God’s command ¾ without any indication of how quickly they respond orwhether any mediation was employed. Obviously, if Genesis 1 is understood from a young-earth perspective, itpresents a formidable problem for theistic evolution.

The King James translation“after their kind” has regularly been taken to indicate fixity of species (orat least of created kind). But theword “after” in this context is probably an archaic English usage, meaning“according to,” as indicated by the use of the phrase elsewhere in theBible. In any case, thecorresponding Hebrew phrase l^emin has no temporal connotation. Thus God made the various kinds ofplants and animals, but the Bible says nothing about whether they reproduce after their kind.

Exegesis of Genesis 2: theOrigin of Humans

The situation is different inGenesis chapter two. On the faceof it, the chapter narrates the creation of Adam by a miraculous rather than aprovidential process. Adam is“formed” from “the dust of the ground,” God “breathed into his nostrils thebreath of life,” and as a result “the man became a living being.”

The idea proposed by sometheistic evolutionists ¾ that God made man by putting a human soul into an ape¾ has often beenargued from the traditional King James translation of nephesh hayah as living soul. So God put a living soul into this creature he had made and he thusbecame human. But thisinterpretation is not favored by the use of this phrase in the previouschapter, where it is applied to the other animals and is translated variouslyas “living creature,” “living thing,” or “breath of life.” It seems that nephesh represents a breathing being, and hayah is the usual adjective for “living,” so that Adambecomes a living, breathing being. The implication is that Adam was not alive before this happened, eventhough his body had already been formed.

The creation of Eve inGenesis 2 is clearly narrated as subsequent to that of Adam, after he had namedthe animals and come to realize that he had no mate like they did. God puts Adam to sleep, takes one ofhis ribs (or a part of his side), and makes the woman from that, a sort ofclone with some significant differences. Again, the natural reading indicates an interventionist rather thanprovidential event.

Exegesis of Genesis 3: theFall of Humans

The fall of mankind into sin in Genesis chapter threelikewise seems problematic for at least some versions of theisticevolution. The event is narratedas though it were a specific historical event, involving two human individualswho make specific successive choices to disobey God ¾the woman following the (implied) advice of the serpent, and the main acceptingthe fruit offered by his wife. Theevent is followed by real consequences for the snake, the woman and the man,which are apparently to be passed on to their descendants.

The Theology of Genesis 2 and 3

I see no problems in Genesis2 and 3 for those versions of theistic evolution in which Adam and Eve areseparate special creations not descended from any pre-existing life. I would probably call these viewsold-earth creation myself, but defer to the label which their proponents wishto use. For other versions inwhich Adam is descended from apes but is still a real special creation, the onlyproblem is the remark in Gen 2:7 about Adam becoming a living being. This has been handled by Glenn Mortonin a satisfactory (though rather quirky) way by suggesting that Adam was anon-viable mutation of an ape that consequently died but God brought to lifeagain.[17] All these views come under the categoryI call “Adam-type” theistic evolution. I see no large exegetical or theological problems here.

On the other hand, I do seeserious problems with “no Adam” theistic evolution. In these versions, there never is a single pair who are thefirst humans. Instead a wholepopulation of anthropoid apes gradually develops into humans over the course ofmany thousands of years. In such acase, the narratives of Genesis 2 and 3 cannot be historical, in contradictionto the natural reading of the many references to Adam, Eve and the fall thatoccur elsewhere in Scripture. Rather the accounts in Genesis are mythical or parabolic in some sense ¾ a simplified way of conveying some information to theoriginal readers which we must now recast in the light of modern scientificfindings. This approach seems toinvolve greatly reshaping the nature of the fall of mankind into sin andrebellion, with consequent influence on the nature of redemption and theatoning work of Christ. These aretheological problems with a vengeance.

The Hermeneutics of Genesis 2 and 3

Let us move on to considerhermeneutical questions. What isthe genre of Genesis 2 and 3? Forthe various forms of special creation (whether young or old earth), thesechapters are fairly straightforward historical narratives, which thus form acontinuum with the remaining chapters of Genesis. They doubtless contain figurative language. Presumably there is anthropomorphismhere and there, probably “formed” (2:7), “breathed” (2:7), “planted” (2:8),perhaps even “said” and “saw” (throughout chapter 1) and “rested” (2:2). There is, after all, really quite a lotabout God we don’t know.

For the various forms of“Adam-type” theistic evolution these chapters are likewise historicalnarratives, but “formed from the dust” (2:7) is taken as a condensed andconcrete expression for a long process of evolution.

The term “myth” has a ratherwide range of meaning, but common to all of these is the idea that the eventnarrated never actually happened. Bible believers are rightly unhappy with this characterization ofbiblical narratives, though examples in Scripture have been suggested thatmight fall into this category. More below when we discuss parable or allegory. One perennial problem is that ancientpagan religions made extensive use of myth, and both Christians and Jews wishedto distance themselves from the idolatry and immoralities of these religions. A major recent problem is that liberalversions of Christianity which employ the category of myth as a genre found inthe Bible regularly wind up (de)mythologizing significant teachings of theScripture, as do Rudolf Bultmann, for example, and the more recent JesusSeminar.

There is probably littlesense in trying to distinguish parable from allegory in Scripture. The distinction is a standard one inmodern literature, but the Hebrew term mashal and its Greek translation parabole included both. So, is there any narrative in Scripture that looks something like whatno-Adam theistic evolutionists envision for Genesis 2 and 3? Yes, there is something similar inEzekiel 16. Let’s have a look atit.

The passage is a parable orallegory for the relation between Jerusalem and God. Jerusalem’s history is parabolically narrated as the storyof a girl from her birth through much of her adulthood. God is pictured as a man who adopts andmarries her. Some of thesignificant features of the narrative are:

· The child’s parents arementioned (16:3, 44-45).

· She is abandoned atbirth (16:4-5).

· God rescues her,allowing her to survive to maturity (16:6-8).

· She is adopted by God,married to him and cleaned up (16:8-9).

· God gives her many giftsof the sort appropriate for a wealthy woman (16:10-13).

· Her fame, due to herbeauty and wealth, spreads far and wide (16:14).

· She begins to trust inher beauty and wealth, turning from her husband to become a prostitute,lavishing his gifts on others and killing her own children (16:15-34).

· Therefore, God is goingto bring disaster on her, using her former lovers to bring judgment, shame andpoverty, but this will not be fatal nor final (16:35-43).

· Jerusalem is like hermother, who despised her husband and children, and like her sisters, though sheherself is the worst of the lot (16:44-59).

· But one day, God willremember his covenant with her, and restore her, and make her sisters to be herdaughters (16:60-63).

What reason might we have tothink the genre of Genesis 2-3 is that of Ezekiel 16? On the positive side, we see an example of a narrative thatboth resembles and is also quite different from the reality it is intended topicture. That is what no-Adamtheistic evolutionists claim for Genesis 2-3 over against what really happenedin the origin and rebellion of mankind. In both Ezekiel and Genesis an individual is used to represent acollective identity, Jerusalem or mankind. We don’t know enough of the history of Jerusalem to know howto relate many of these features, but we know Jerusalem existed for centuriesbetween its birth and its adoption by God to be the capital city ofIsrael. That, after it becameIsraelite, it grew to be very wealthy in the time of David and Solomon, and itsinhabitants began to play up to the pagan nations around them and to adopttheir idolatrous practices. That,by the time of Ezekiel, Jerusalem was in real trouble from theBabylonians. That afterwards,Jerusalem was conquered, devastated, and abandoned, only to be rebuilt in amuch more humble style long afterwards. Some of the items seem to be predictions to be fulfilled at the end ofthe age. Both Ezekiel and Genesisuse rather striking figures in the story to represent something different inthe reality. In Ezekiel, therescue of an abandoned child and her subsequent marriage is used to pictureGod’s protection of pre-Israelite Jerusalem and his subsequent taking of thecity to be his capital. InGenesis, the molding of clay and breathing into it is a vivid picture for God’sguiding evolution to develop apes into humans. Much more of this sort of comparison could be developed, butI will let proponents of this view do it themselves.

Negatively, there areindicators in Ezekiel 16 that it is a parabolic narrative, indicators of thesort we do not find in Genesis. For instance, Ezk 16:2-3 says, “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices, and say, “This is whatthe sovereign LORD says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of theCanaanites; your father was anAmorite and your mother aHittite.” So the girl is clearlylabeled as a city. Her father andmother are ethnic groups. Hersisters are other cities. Clearlywe are in an allegory or parable.

In Genesis, we could take thenames of Adam and Eve as allegorical, but there are no explicit indicators thatwe should do so. We do have theman called Adam, which could be ageneric name, though it is not the common noun for man, Ish, but rather (apparently) a play on the fact that hewas made from the ground, adamah. The woman is called “woman,” Ishah, from her creation in 2:22 until she is named Eve (havah)in 3:20, apparently a play on the word “living” (hay). Thesecould be allegorical names, but because we are looking at the origin of therace and the first male and female in it, we should not expect them to have thesort of distinctive names needed when there are many humans on earth. So the account might be an allegory orit might not, but there are no explicit markers of allegory.

The Ezekiel narrative shiftsback and forth between literal features of Jerusalem and figurative features ofthe story. The original readersare assumed to be able to handle this because they know a good deal about thehistory of the city. In Genesis,by contrast, we don’t know the “real story” until it is discovered by modernanthropologists, so the readers would be pretty much in the dark until now.

Could Ezekiel 16 be a modelfor the genre of Genesis 2-3? Ithink it could, but the warrant for reading it as such would have to comealmost totally from general revelation in nature. I do not think the scientific case for a gapless evolutionis strong enough to warrant our making the paradigm shift.

Fully Gifted Creation

In recent years Howard VanTill has proposed a version of pure theistic evolution (according to my chart,page 6) which he labels “fully gifted creation.”[18] Van Till has chosen this name for hisview because he emphasizes that everything needed to produce all the diversityin creation (including the unique human abilities) is somehow built into thecreated structure of particles and laws at the beginning, operating under thepurely providential guidance of God. This is not imposed by supernatural, miraculous intervention at variouspoints along the way.

It seems to me this viewshould be testable. Do we havegood reason to believe that nature contains the information necessary toconstruct the complex structures we see in living things, especially inhumans? Where is it? In the DNA? But wouldn’t it also be in the DNA of primitive organisms aswell? Could it be hidden in someinvisible law structure? Itdoesn’t look to me as though chaos theory, for example, is going to generatethe type of structure needed. Willmutation and natural selection generate the information? My experience with computer modeling(and Behe’s experience with irreducible complexity) does not incline me tothink so.[19] I would say that at present, we do nothave evidence that nature contains the type of information necessary for thesestructures, nor that they were inserted providentially (i.e., gradually) byGod. Thus Van Till’s view iscurrently a natural law of the gaps model, but of a theistic rather thanatheistic sort.

If Van Till is an orthodoxChristian, he does not deny the historicity of the miracles narrated in thebiblical account. In this senseVan Till does not have a deistic world view, though some have accused him ofit. Yet Van Till does restrictmiracles to salvation history, removing them from the events of creation.[20] This is certainly a possible option,though (given that the Bible does have miracles) it seems somewhatarbitrary. One reason for choosingthis option is that creation is then fully gifted, rather than incomplete,which certainly sounds like it gives God more credit for what he has done thanwould postulating an incomplete creation in which God needs to intervene againand again.

This reminds me of a statement by Fred Hoyle in his book Galaxies,Nuclei and Quasars written back inthe sixties. In explaining why hepreferred his steady-state cosmology over the various varieties of the big-bangmodel, Hoyle noted that the cosmological models he preferred were those inwhich all the necessary features were built in from the beginning and arosenaturally from the laws, rather than having to have special adjustments likehis old post-war automobile did to keep it running.[21]

No doubt if we picture God asa watchmaker and the universe as his watch, we would think his creation muchmore elegant if it kept time without his having to open the back every few daysto make adjustments! But supposeGod’s creation is a violin he made on which to perform a concerto, and thatGod’s interventions are crucial parts of his playing the music, like a seriesof pizzicatos in the midst of regular bowing. We don’t fault Stradivarius for not being a watchmaker.

Let us suppose with Van Tillthat God’s miracles are restricted to salvation history. When did salvation history begin? With the fall of Adam and Eve? But Satan is clearly fallen beforethen, and so presumably are the wicked angels. In fact, the creation account contains not a peep about thecreation of angels, a fact so glaring that the author of the ancient Jewishpseudepigraphal book Jubilees felt constrained to put it in (on the first day).[22] My own guess (partly based on theremark in Hebrews 9:11 about the heavenly tabernacle not being a part of thiscreation) is that Satan was already fallen before God created our universe, andthat our creation is a part of God’s salvation work.

Whether or not creation is apart of salvation history, Job 38:7 suggests that the angels were present atthe creation of the earth. Perhapsthe miracles in creation were intended for their benefit. Or they may have even been intended forus moderns, who would begin to see scientific evidence for miraculousintervention in creation in the twentieth century, at a time when thehistorical reliability of the other biblical narratives containing miracles hadcome under attack.

By the way, it does not seemto me that any of the current Christian views of creation have done much withthe question of whether and how the angels may have been involved in God’screative work. This is nothingthat secular science is going to want to investigate, but Christians surelyshould give the matter some thought.

Mind-Body Problem

Somewhat related to thematter of creation models is the mind-body problem. Space forbids any extensive discussion of this matter, but afew questions are in order. Howdoes the mind relate to the body? Is the mind merely some sort of signal moving around in the hardware ofthe brain? Or is themind/soul/spirit some sort of ghost in the machine? Is the brain, as Sir John Eccles suggested, a machine thanonly a spirit can operate?[23] Is the theory that reduces the mind toa signal the real science and the other theory only theology? If the mind is merely someepiphenomenon that arises only when the brain is complex enough, what happensto it when the brain dies? Itseems to me that there are serious problems here regarding the biblicalteaching of personal immortality, post-mortem survival, and the intermediatestate (existence of the person between death and resurrection). The choice between a monistic and adualistic view of human nature seems to me to have serious theologicalconsequences which Christian monists have not solved.[24]

The mind-body interaction isalso a paradigm for intelligent design. As I see it, the intelligent design approach affirms that intelligenceis not reducible to either natural law or random (chaotic, chance)phenomena. Unlike chance,intelligence is not meaningless, but is characterized by purpose and goal. Unlike law, an intelligence caninitiate actions, and these actions are often ones which cannot be predicted.

Similarly it seems that themind-body interaction is to some extent a model for the interaction of God withnature. Just as our unseen mindcontrols the events of our visible body, so the unseen God controls visiblenature. As the unseen mind is (insome limited sense) transcendent over the body, so God is (without limit)transcendent over nature. Thereare, of course, features in the mind-body interaction which do not correspondto those in God-nature, but that is merely to say that we humans are made inthe image of God but are not gods ourselves.

Summary: Some Problems forTheistic Evolution

As our discussion has suggested, there are a number of varieties oftheistic evolution. Thesevarieties have various problems.

Under scientific problems, we suggest the following. Transitional fossils are a problem forall versions of theistic evolution except those with rapid, guided transitionsbetween the major biological categories. Irreducible complexity is problematic also, except (again) for versionswhich provide for rapid, guided transitions into these new structurescharacterized by such complexity. Theistic evolutionists tend to fill gaps with natural law (divineprovidence) rather than miracle (divine intervention). This is acceptable as a defaultposition. Some criteria need to bedeveloped as to when this default position should be abandoned in particularcases.

Among theological problems,we suggest the following. Theaccount of human origins in Genesis 2, taken as a historical account ratherthan myth or allegory, is a severe problem for all no-Adam versions of theisticevolution, and a lesser problem for most versions of theistic evolution whichhave a non-human ancestor for Adam. The account of the origin of human sin and death in Genesis 3, taken asa historical account rather than myth or allegory, is a severe problem for allno-Adam versions of theistic evolution. The warrant for reading Genesis 2 and 3 as myth or allegory comes fromoutside Scripture, allegedly from the gapless nature of evolution. This is anexample of “God of the gaps” thinking in which natural law is the gapplugger. We should not mistakeresearch agendas for empirical results. “One who puts on his armor should not boast like one who takes it off ”(1 Kings 20:11). The desire tohave a non-interventionist origin of humanity leads naturally to a monisticview of human nature, raising severe problems for post-mortem survival, adoctrine clearly taught in Scripture.