Divine Creation

Nowhere? To me you might as well be saying that nowhere does science begin to support and give evidence for gravity.

And nowhere does the Bible teach that God did not use biological evolution to create the universe. Of course, the same can be said of gravity, photosynthesis, relativity, the second law of thermodynamics, cell-division, and a million other aspects of God’s creation. Simply because the Bible is silent on an issue it does not mean that the issue does not exist. Do the Bible writers explain the rules of Greek phonetics when want to tell a story? Must Hieronymus Bosch explain how he mixes the oil and how he paints on wood panels as well as create The Garden of Earthly Delights?

Nowhere does the Bible actually give any explanation of how God forms objects; that is not the Bible’s purpose. What is important is that “God formed Man”, all else is secondary with regards to creation. One Scripture writer states that “God formed him in his mother’s womb.” How God did so the writer doesn’t say. That it took a sperm and an egg, cell division and nine months of gestation is completely missing from his statement. Are we then to say, “No, God doesn’t create Man over nine months and by cell division because the Bible doesn’t say so; it simply says God forms man, therefore God forms man immediately.”?

Did God form Adam using any scientific principle by which all those after him are created? Did God use cell division? Did God use DNA? Did He create the skeleton first or the organs first? Did He start from the outside in or the inside out? Did He turn the dust into cells or DNA first and then construct that out of man or did He make a mud statue and then bring that to life? Was the statue wet or dry? When did man first have atoms and various subatomic particles? Did God use scientific laws for creating man or did he break all the known scientific laws of the already created universe to make man? Did God turn dust into a sperm and an egg and then allow the gestation process to do its work? At what point did the cells come alive: before or exactly at the point that man was granted conscious? If God took dust and created live cells that he then turned those live cells into a man does this contradict the Bible?

“God spoke to create all but man, and He personally formed man from the dust of the ground.” Well, what about everyone else since Adam? How can Jeremiah say that God formed him? He didn’t did he? No, a sperm from his dad and an egg from his mom formed him, not God. Is Jeremiah less than the image of God because he was not directly formed from dust as Adam? God did speak to create man; the Bible clearly says so. Everything that exists as creation was created by the Word of God, including man. Jesus Himself was created by the Word of God, that certainly doesn’t make Him less than Adam.

For as long as I have been discussing the issue of science and the Faith, I have always heard believers who disbelieve in evolution cite, as their authority, atheists. Why is this done? Why are atheists cited? Why not cite theistic evolutionists? I know why; it would defeat your argument.

Who cares what atheists and “secular” scientists think? They don’t believe in God, so why should any believer cite them as an authority about God?

Would I go to a person who only has a vague awareness of James Joyce, has never read Ulysses, does not like Joyce from the little he has heard, and then ask for his opinion on what the purpose of the "Circe" chapter is? No, I would go to someone who actually has read Ulysses and get his opinion. I wouldn’t go to a person who doesn’t know Greek and get his opinion on particular uses of the genitive? That a punk rocker or rapper doesn’t agree with or even understand baroque music does not therefore place their opinion of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in any high level of musical authority in my personal artistic pantheon. Furthermore, I wouldn’t go to someone who hasn’t studied biology to get their scientific opinion on evolution. Thus, I wouldn’t go to an atheist to get his opinion on evolution and God. Their ignorant of God. They don’t know. If one brings up relativity, the hydrologic cycle, quantum mechanics, and any other scientific fact and they will say it disproves the creation of God. Does it? No, and if an atheists say that one wouldn’t believe them. So why should we then believe them when they say evolution disproves God. Most of those atheists out there who do think that evolution disproves God aren’t even biologists themselves.

Why is it that so many people can believe in God and believe in evolution at the same time and not have a problem? Why do so many scientists and biologists not have a problem with these as mutually inclusive ideas?

Don’t worry. You could not have possibly known what point I was going to make because I did not tell you what my point was going to be. I’ve argued all this before. These are all inerrancy issues and science versus religion questions. These issues were settled by the Church in the latter half of the 18th century and the first half of the twentieth century. One might as well be arguing that Matthew and Luke didn’t use sources, Moses wrote every word of the Pentateuch, or the book of Daniel was written during the 6th century BCE. It’s all milk to me now. One might as well be singing “Zacchaeus was a wee little man” to me.

We must dig deeper. What does the evolution mean for Man in his relation with God? If the first Man was very biologically different from contemporary Man, what does that mean about Man being created in the likeness of God?

These million and billion year old models of the universe continuing to create itself over time are sublime. Man is continuing to be molded. The earth, through storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, and the natural erosion of water and gravity, is carefully being carved and by God from eternity. It’s like a man with his bonsai tree. It’s a man tending his garden. It’s the Creator creating and continuing to create and, therefore, still enjoying His creation.

He is continuing to create us as well. The parables of Jesus are wonderful in conveying this. All the agricultural metaphors as applied to humanity.

Really, how sublime is the creation!

How like God is evolution! How like God is the slow change towards perfection! He shapes the His universe. He molds it like a potter with water and dirt over time. Just as water shapes the earth (erosion and the hydrologic cycle) so our bodies are shaped (cell-division cycle) over time until we are not biologically the same being we were when we first started. It is astounding!

In the first creation story God is seen at a distance when creating. However, in the second creation story, God is anthropomorphic and walking in and amongst His creation. He plants a garden, He forms animals from out of the ground, He forms man from the dust of the ground like a kid making mud pies, like a potter at his clay.

And God continues to create. He is continually shaping the universe. The creative process continues, both geologically, biologically and spiritually. God continues to form His world through weathering. God continues to form biological man through evolution. God continues to form spiritual man through sanctification. The creation goes on. God continues to create and God continues to be active in the forming of His world.

How could He not be?

To say that evolution or weathering or the hydrologic cycle is not evidence of God’s creative activity is nonsensical. Quite the opposite! Evolution et al is proof of God’s creative activity. That it resembles many other means of His creative process should be of no surprise to any of us.

To say that God should not have created by evolution ... well, it’s one think to tell Mozart he should not have first created Don Giovanni with the actors alternating between spoken recitatives and sung arias and then preferring the latter secco-recitatives composed by Mozart in place of the spoken text, but to tell God He shouldn’t use evolution to create because it is a method beneath His dignity as creator? Nonsense! It is not a mediocre method of creativity on the part of God; it is a method that has a quality of transcendental greatness whispers to our spirits of the majesty and glory that is God. All other animal life in the universe walks around in a condition of utter indifference to the splendor that surrounds them. But we who are made in the image of our creator can gaze up and around at it all and (like the psalmists and the author of the book of Job) appreciate with a sliver of transcendental finity that which is reflected as the creative process.

To somehow say that God did not or could not employ the method of evolution in his creative process is tantamount to saying that God did not create at all.

“See that perfectly formed pocket watch? Was it random chance that it appeared as a perfectly functioning watch? See that painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Did it randomly appear as such out of then air? Is Don Quixote the result of a million monkeys typing?”

Frank - “See that elderly man over there with all the wrinkles and laugh lines under the eyes? How much would you wager that God created him as an old man?”

Ernest - “Nonsense! He shows all the signs of the aging process. He started off one way and only changed into that person over time.”

Frank - “Are you saying that God could not create a man who is already old?”

Ernest – “Of course God could do that, but it is a matter of whether God did do that. As we look at His other work it is a better wager to suggest that God created that man over time.”

Frank – “So if God said that He Himself created this man as an elderly man –“

Ernest – “Well, that’s different. Then God created that man as elderly from the get go.”

Frank – “But God just says that He created that man.”

Ernest – “Which leaves me to maintain that God created him the way He creates everyone else.”

And to somehow say that evolution would mean a less than sublime sense of creation … well, it’s like that slight moment of embarrassment when brilliant poet T.S. Eliot referred to Hamlet as an artistic failure. A reference to which literary critic Harold Bloom responded, “Then show me an artistic success!”