intimately familiar with all of the scientific and theological arguments against theistic evolution. Furthermore, my journey was relatively private and I knew few others who were traveling a similar path—others who could be fellow sojourners with me through the various spiritual and intellectual battles that lay ahead. But it was actually several personal fears that were the greatest enemies on my path toward the goal of integrating my long-held faith in Christ with a new understanding of physical world around me. In a step of faith, I dedicated myself to a robust self-study regimen in order to help wade through the diverse scientific and theological issues at hand.
In the end, my Christian faith not only remained intact, my journey resulted in a richer faith in the divine Logos-made-flesh (John 1:14); a profound love for the universe created for, by, and through the pre-existent Christ (Col 1:16; John 1:3); and an increased awe in a God who could accomplish so much “from so simple a beginning.”3 Over the last five years since I declared publicly my acceptance of the scientific evidence for evolution and humanity’s common ancestry with the rest of Earth’s flora and fauna,4 my family and I have been through two work-related moves, and have belonged to two conservative Christian congregations; both communities professed and lived out their faith in Jesus of Nazareth to an admirable degree, and both remain decidedly young-earth creationist in their theology. In both cases, I chose not to hide my evolutionary creationist views, but rather discuss them openly when people solicited my views. In return, I have been blessed by a noticeable extension of grace from family, friends, and fellow churchgoers—testimony to the fact that we can live and worship together in unity, even when we disagree over this issue.
Of course, being fully aware of how foreign a theistic evolutionary paradigm is to many an evangelical Christian audience, I’ve learned to have interactions about my views privately and with the utmost respect for the personal beliefs of my conversation partners—those beliefs are the ones I once held, after all. Furthermore, I’ve developed a heightened sensitivity to the issue of spiritual maturity, that is, how well-grounded one’s faith is in the person of Jesus Christ. As a result, I have had the pleasure of discussing my journey in an atmosphere of genuine mutual admiration with more than a few people in my worship community. Through these various dialogues, I have identified four fears about considering evolutionary creationism that, in most cases, mirrored those I experienced in my own journey. These fears are not petty, nor are they inconsequential. They are real and can have long-lasting effects if not dealt with in love, patience, honesty, and understanding. I’d like to describe and explore those fears and how they might be overcome through Christ, and always with an eye on deeper faith in Him.
Although this essay is written primarily for those who are honestly seeking an integration of scientific truth with their faith in Christ, yet are struggling mightily in the process, it can also serve as an aid to evolutionary creationists who seek to share how one’s Christian faith can remain intact, authentic, and vibrant, even during such a paradigm-shifting pilgrimage. It is my prayer that these reflections will assist the reader in identifying such personal fears, spur the genuine seeker to work through the sources of his or her anxieties, and direct him or her toward scholarly, pastoral resources (most always located in the footnotes of this essay) that can assist the acceptance of evolution as God’s chosen method of creating. All of this is possible without sacrificing such core tenets of evangelical faith as belief in the role of Jesus in actual history (cf. Luke 1:1-4), the necessity of the Holy Spirit to transcend our fallen natures (Rom 14:17), and the experience of spiritual rebirth as adopted children of God (John 1:12-13; 3:3).
The heart of all anxiety is fear of loss.
Confronting Our Fears, Part 2:
Losing Biblical Authority
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim 3:16-17, ESV)
Throughout my various conversations with fellow believers, the most-mentioned anxiety over accepting an evolutionary creationist paradigm is the fear of losing the Bible as one’s spiritual anchor and source of authority—the texts that give the global Christian community its doctrinal and philosophical distinctiveness. Growing up in the Baptist tradition and later becoming a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, the inerrancy of “God-breathed”5 Scripture and its identification as the fount of all truth was paramount in defining my life as a Christian believer. Of course, while some would debate the veracity of such a doctrine as it pertains to this discussion, I believe that neither inerrancy nor authority is at issue when it comes to Genesis’ opening chapter. The real issue is hermeneutics—how we read the authoritative texts.
An interpretative rule used commonly in evangelical Christian churches today states, “If the literal sense makes good sense, seek no other sense lest you come up with nonsense.” This method, however, lends itself unnecessarily to the fear of losing biblical authority. This tendency toward fear is especially acute when the individual doing the interpreting does not have at his or her fingertips the full scope of knowledge required to allow the biblical text to speak for itself—or rather, to allow God to speak through ancient genres with which the interpreter isn’t naturally familiar.
I readily admit that the “literal sense” of Genesis 1—as dictated by our own culture that focuses on material origins and unwittingly holds Genesis 1 hostage to the scientific method—does in fact rule out cosmological and biological evolution as God’s creative methods. But perhaps a better question would be whether a “literary sense” of Genesis 1 would allow for evolution. To read evolution into Scripture (eisegesis) or out of Scripture (exegesis) would be dishonest, especially considering that the author (or final redactor) of Genesis was not privy to modern scientific discoveries. I would also argue that a “literal” reading of Genesis 1, framed by our own modern paradigm, is unfaithful to the original intent of the author, and that we should take special care to read Genesis 1 “literarily” through the eyes of the ancient Hebrews, understanding what was (and wasn’t) important to them. Dr. Conrad Hyers writes:
This is the interpretive issue, and it cannot be settled by dogmatic assertions, threats about creeping secularism, or attempts to associate views with skepticism . . . . Nor can the issue be settled by marshaling scientific evidence for or against either evolution or six-day creation, since it would first need to be demonstrated that the Genesis accounts intended to offer scientific and historical statements. Otherwise the whole discussion is based on the wrong premises. As such it is scientific creationism itself which compromises the religious meaning of Genesis and is an accommodation to scientific language and method.6
Since Genesis was written in the Hebrew language and most of us can’t read Hebrew, we take for granted the necessity of translating from an ancient language into another in which we are fluent. Yet, we often forget that, because we are separated by at least 2,500 years from the culture that produced Genesis, we also need the culture “translated” for us as well.7
Returning to the text
As I mentioned above, adopting an overly literal hermeneutic strongly lends itself to ruling out both old-earth creationism and theistic evolution, but as a firm believer that “all truth is God’s truth,” I felt that I was missing something. Because I believed (and still do) that the six days of creation were six, successive, 24-hour periods (“there was evening and there was morning—the nth day”), I struggled mightily to understand Genesis 1 in light of what I had been learning about the vast age of the cosmos as determined by the best scientific minds, both secular and Christian.8 If the age of the cosmos truly was as old as the scientific establishment has led us to believe, I thought that digging deeper into the culture of the ancient Near East could help me reconcile the two opposing forces of scientific observation and biblical testimony.
It was at this time that I discovered the works of John Walton, Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. His commentary on Genesis9 and his book on the conceptual world of the Hebrew Scriptures10 propelled me toward a realization that the focus of Genesis 1 was much less
