The idea of theistic evolution has come under fire recently and rightfully so. Several scientists and theologians have worked together to address the idea in a new book called “Theistic Evolution”. In it, they explain that the storyline of scripture, and scientific facts, are incompatible with evolution for several reasons. They also explain what the implications of holding this view are.
In the article by Wayne Grudem below, he states the following:
Theistic evolution is a viewpoint that God created matter and after that, God didn’t guide, intervene, or act directly to cause any empirically detectable change in the natural behavior of matter until all living things had evolved by purely natural processes.
But, what that belief implies is that there are actually twelve details in Genesis 1-3 that simply didn’t happen. If you hold to theistic evolution (in the most common form in which it is held today), you would say:
- Adam and Eve were not the first human beings, and perhaps Adam and Eve never even existed.
- Adam and Eve were born from human parents.
- God didn’t act directly or specially to create Adam out of dust from the ground.
- God didn’t act directly to create Eve from a rib taken from Adam’s side.
- Adam and Eve were never sinless human beings.
- Adam and Eve did not commit the first human sins because human beings were doing morally evil things long before Adam and Eve existed.
- Human death did not begin as a result of Adam’s sin because human beings existed long before Adam and Eve and they were always subject to death.
- Not all human beings have descended from Adam and Eve for there were thousands of other human beings on the earth at the time that God chose two of them and called them Adam and Eve.
- God did not directly act in the natural world to create different kinds of fish, birds, and land animals.
- God did not rest from his work of creation or stop any special creative activity after plants, animals, and human beings appeared on the earth.
- God never created an originally very good natural world—a safe environment, free of thorns, thistles, and other harmful things.
- After Adam and Eve sinned, God did not place any curse on the world that changed the workings of the natural world, making it more hostile to mankind.
Theistic Evolution: J. P. Moreland, Stephen C. Meyer, Christopher Shaw, Ann K. Gauger, Wayne Grudem
This volume of more than two dozen essays written by highly credentialed scientists, philosophers, and theologians from Europe and North America provides the most comprehensive critique of theistic evolution yet produced, opening the door to scientific and theological alternatives.
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