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by Steve Risner

We’re in the fifth and final week on this topic of “Can you be a Christian and accept evolution?” which was a question posed by an article I found on sciencenetwork.uk. You can find that article here. You can also find the first four of my blog posts on this here, here, here, and here. Thanks for reading. Let’s jump right into it.

“Psalm 19 compels us to listen carefully to both science and the Bible on this issue.” No, it doesn’t. They’re giving equal footing to nature as they do the Bible. Again, this is very similar to paganism—the worship of nature. I suggest trusting the Lord and His clear teachings on this. Is God so inept He couldn’t communicate well enough to get the message across to us? He required atheists or, at the very least unbelievers or those who reject Scripture, to point out the truth to us? I find that hard to believe.

“…is there a way to take both Scripture and science seriously and accept a mainstream view of evolutionary theory?” Not even close. The author says, “Well, yes!” like they’re excited to be a heretic. But the truth is if you don’t have reading comprehension issues, there is no way to reconcile universal common descent and the creation narrative in Genesis. It’s simply not possible. Suggesting you can reconcile these tells me you’re either not very bright, don’t understand what either are telling us, don’t care and just want to be able to walk both sides, or some combination of these. Yes, it seems quite evident that God made the biosphere capable of limited adaptation. That seems like something a loving God would do. It also seems like we can observe this happening in nature. But don’t be confused; this is not at all related to abiogenesis and universal common descent. Before you throw your hands up and say, “Abiogenesis isn’t part of evolution,” let’s be honest. First, this discussion is about far more than universal common descent. It involves the totality of the humanist origins myth from the moment of the Big Bang up until the emergence of man on the scene and all that allegedly evolved between the two. Secondly, abiogenesis is intimately linked to Darwinism and is taught alongside Darwinism in every textbook we have available to us on the topic.

“I suspect that after another century or so of good science and good Biblical scholarship we’ll be able to draw some firmer conclusions.” Again, the “truth” found in what this person is calling science is far from complete and will be changed many times over in the next 100 years. The Bible is the unchanging Word of God. This person wants to skew the meaning of Scripture to fit into some humanistic interpretation of nature that is misapplied to history. Atheism requires deep time; Creationism does not at all. There is no reason to believe in deep time unless you first have bought the humanist origins myth as true before looking at the evidence – then you HAVE to believe in deep time. But, again, the topic of origins cannot be a scientific one. The Bible is truth; I believe this, and I’m biased this way. Everyone is biased in some way, though many will deny it. Are you honest enough to admit it? But future scholarship of the Bible will only work to further the decay of the Church from the Truth found in Scripture. Many of the scholars who want to tell us about the Bible these days are secularists. They have no regard or love for the Bible and only look at it as a book of myths and legends with the occasional nugget of historical truth. Nothing supernatural. Nothing applicable to the human condition. Let the Word of God say what it says. Accept it or reject it, but don’t reject it and act like you’re maintaining some high regard for Scripture or the Lord who inspired it.

“But the very existence of these men and women – scholars committed to the authority of Scripture who also accept evolution – proves that it is indeed possible to be a faithful Christian and agree with the scientific consensus on this issue.” Not at all, but even if it did; so what? And, again, many if not most of these scholars are not believers. They are not “committed to the authority of Scripture.” Even while Paul was doing his missionary work, there were those who poisoned the Gospel or even slightly changed it, making it something other than what it was. The author is trusting now in the authority of men (although I’ve not heard of most of these people in their list) and position rather than in the written Word of God. There are some Christians who will say that abortion is okay—it’s a woman’s choice. Does the existence of these people mean this idea is good? Some Christians will say that the man is the dominating force in his home and if he sees fit to beat his wife and kids, that’s his right. Does the existence of these people mean this is right? Some Christians think there are other ways to heaven other than Jesus Christ. Jesus said He is the only way—that no one comes to the Father but through Him. Does the existence of these people mean it’s okay to seek God elsewhere? Some people, like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, think their faith and the faith described in the Bible are harmonious. Does that mean it’s true since they exist? I hope you’re seeing how utterly preposterous this is. The existence of heretics (not saying all these folks are heretics mind you) does not mean heresy is respectable and equal to the Truth.

“Paul’s aware of the complexity involved in interpreting God’s truth rightly, and he knows Christians will come to different conclusions on things.” These complexities didn’t involve creation, did they? He seemed pretty unwavering on that as did Peter and John. Jesus seemed convinced the Word of God was true on the matter of creation, too. Again, the way theistic evolutionists argue, they suggest we can’t know anything from Scripture. That’s simply not true, though it is a logical conclusion of their beliefs. It’s simply wrong.

“You don’t have to choose between two things that you hold dear.” This is such a strange statement to me. Who holds evolution or, more specifically universal common descent, dearly? The fact that the Lord Almighty built life with the ability to have limited adaptive powers is awesome. But I don’t see how someone would hold common ancestry dearly. Are we putting way too much emotion into something that is nothing more than man’s attempt to explain nature and life without God? Jesus tells us we can’t serve two masters. Our hearts can’t handle it. The two masters in this case would be Christ and nature. It just doesn’t work to worship the creation and the Creator.

“Paul’s emphasis in these matters is that we are free in Christ.” What a terrible misapplication of this thought. We are free from the power of sin. We are free in Christ to do what we ought to do. Prior to that moment of salvation, we were not capable of doing the good we ought to do. With Christ in us, we can. Freedom in Christ doesn’t mean we can believe anything we want. It doesn’t mean we can toss out any of the Holy Scriptures we don’t like. It doesn’t mean anything like what this person is suggesting it means.

“In Christ you’re free to hold to young earth creation and you’re free to embrace evolution. You’re free to sit somewhere in the middle, and you’re free to be undecided.” Just because I feel it’s worth stressing again: we are not “free in Christ” to believe anything we think sounds okay. In fact, we know the path is narrow. Compromise is not something the Lord appreciates in us. He tells us in Revelation He’d rather we were hot or cold, not lukewarm. We are not “free in Christ” to toss out entire sections of Scripture or foundational doctrines merely because a man or woman who was likely an unbeliever told us what they thought about origins that differed from the Bible. Again, do not be confused: origins is not science. You cannot observe one-time past events. You cannot make predictions about one-time past events. You cannot experiment on one-time past events. This is especially true if those events are surrounded by conditions we are in the dark about.

“…heeding Paul’s command to ‘accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you.’” This is what creationists tend to do. We do accept brothers and sisters who may be led astray concerning creation and the authority of Scripture. Some are fairly radical about it, but in general, we can accept them while simultaneously rejecting their bad theology. We have more similarities, in most cases, than differences and if we believe that Christ is the Son of God, that He lived a sinless life on earth and was crucified for our sins, only to rise again on the 3rd day and ascend into heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Father, we are brothers and sisters in a spiritual sense. But I would advise believers who have rejected what the Bible tells us about creation and the Flood to get a good footing because the slope is rather slick. I’ve witnessed too many who follow this path and eventually reject the Lord altogether.

The author then, in their notations, explains that St. Augustine of Hippo is on their side here. This is simply not true. While St. Augustine had a complex view of Genesis that evolved over time, he held to a literal interpretation. This author also says Augustine did not conform to a 24-hour day time frame for the days of creation while he did maintain a historical interpretation of the book of Genesis. This is true. Augustine believed it was possible the Lord used the word “day” in the Genesis account of creation when, in fact, He created on each of those days in moments rather than 24 hours. In reality, we have no reason to believe God required 24 hours each day to complete His work. But each day is marked by something that He did unique to that day, in a specific order and consecutively. While evolutionists like to use him by misapplying his statements, Augustine was very much a Biblical creationist. He had some questions concerning exactly what happened on each of the days of creation and how long each day took (was it 24 hours or was it only seconds or minutes?) but he held firmly to the historicity of the narrative.

I pray this series of posts has helped you, the reader, understand some of the ins and outs of this debate. Evolution is a thing that happens. But evolution is also a competing story for how God created everything there is. It depends on what you mean by “evolution” when you use the term. It can describe living things or the cosmos or any number of other things when we talk about it in this debate. God gave His creation the ability to adapt to different environments within a limited degree. He’s awesome that way. Praise Him for His mighty acts! He is worthy of all our praise!

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