Why as a Christian, I believe evolution to be in harmony with God’s revelation.

There is some evidence that the majority of Christians do not hold to the relatively modern ‘creationist’ interpretation of the Biblical text (e.g., as propounded by ‘Answers in Genesis’) that we must take every word of Genesis as literal historical fact. Let me commence by stating my firm belief that all Christians are united in Jesus Christ and in the simple Gospel that God was in Christ with the clear purpose of reconciling all people to himself by means of Jesus life, sacrificial death, resurrection and ascension. Any issue on which Christians may, and in my view should espouse a position (such as creation and evolution or creationism) must not divide us. As soon as we allow that to happen, we betray the Gospel.

The style of Genesis is not in the mode of modern historical narrative (I have also seen a quotation attributed to St Augustine in the 6th century CE, that by his scholarship the early chapters of Genesis are not to be taken literally). Nor can it be dismissed as simply myth, i.e., truth conveyed through fictional account developed around and out of vaguely historical characters (Robin Hood type stories). Nor can it be described as in the mode of an historical novel. Nor was it ever intended to be a scientific treatise! The style is sufficient to adequately present an overview of God’s purposes for mankind and is one of the first significant literary markers of the eternal God’s revelation to mankind.

God had previously revealed himself to Abraham, Jacob and Joseph and, I believe, then chose Moses from birth, gave him the best education of his time and revealed to him some of his ultimate purposes for all mankind. I believe that Moses, inspired by God’s Spirit, selectively compiled from all the traditions and writings available to him, the account of God’s revelation from creation to Joseph - that is, the book of Genesis. One might describe the style of Genesis as that of prophecy regarding the past – this is not to disregard the precise literary style of the opening chapters with the human author’s clear intention of presenting the divine gifts of the Sabbath, marriage, the hope of salvation and the promise of an acceptable sacrifice.

The prophetic normally proclaims God’s message both for now and sometimes future events - it is not intended to be an exact future account, but a precise challenge or prediction about what will happen if people continue to go their own way rather than the way God would show them. In the same way we can imagine a prophetic style that looks back to the dim and distant past for which there are no written records. The style is not meant to be a precise historical account, but rather is a revelation from God of significant words about where mankind has come from and where we are headed. The precise words used can all be inspired to give an accurate understanding without having to be scientifically accurate.

As Henri Blocher points out in his book In the Beginning, the style of chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis has been convincingly shown by scholarship to be very carefully constructed on an indicative seven day framework that was never intended in the context to be taken as literal. We are still in the seventh day.

Let me cut to the chase however, because I consider this debate focuses primarily around the special significance of mankind in God’s creation and of his fall from grace in God’s sight. This I suspect to a significant extent underpins the drive of creationists to defend their interpretation of Genesis and to attack the evolutionary theory, which they view as the child of scientific atheism.

Neither the style nor the text of Genesis 1 and 2 preclude mankind being ‘created’ from a pre-existent animal (such as homo-erectus). In scientific terminology mankind is homo-sapiens and as such is not the same species as any other recently discovered remains of extinct man-like creatures. For mankind to be created ‘in God’s image’, it is commonsense to understand ‘image’ as the potential likeness of God’s character (not his physical characteristics). Thus the first man and woman (whom we call Adam and Eve) and all the rest of us are completed by God with an eternal soul that has the potential to reflect all of God’s character – this has since been proved to be the case in the person of Jesus Christ!

This completion of the first homo-sapiens I believe was accomplished to some extent at least by means of an evolutionary process. Since God is both outside creation (by virtue of his being the creator) and at the same time is intimately involved in and with all things (by virtue of his revealed character), Christians must assert that any evolutionary process is within and in fulfilment of God’s purposes. This is not to negate in any way the truth that God hides his hand to the extent that chaos theory and the laws of chance may - and do - have their part in all of God’s creative ways. Nor can we tell from Scripture whether or not animals have any eternal existence – we generally assume they do not, but only because there is no revealed or logical reason that they should.

As for the defence of the doctrine of the fall (Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace through disobedience) and of the promise of salvation (from the spiritual consequences of disobedience), the evolution of mankind does not, as some would hold, discredit these eternal themes of Genesis. It is argued by some that evolution would exclude Adam and Eve being sinless before the fall, hence I believe creationists insist that Genesis 3 is literal history. The style of Genesis 3 is no more intended by Moses to be literal history than Genesis 1 and 2. To treat the text as such is little short of absurd. Moses is here giving an amazing insight into the relationship between good and evil and mankind’s struggle between what we know to be right and our disinclination to submit to God’s will & grace for our lives. We are not being asked to believe that a snake literally spoke to Eve or that any other part of this wonderful chapter of God’s revelation is to be taken literally.

However let us for a moment suppose that the Creationist’ interpretation is right – that the snake in Genesis 3 actually spoke out loud to Eve. How did this specimen suddenly develop human vocal chords enabling it to speak? And how did it suddenly learn the human language that Adam & Eve had invented for themselves? Ah, but says the creationist Satan can perform miracles and was able to turn this snake into a snake with human vocal chords and taught it to speak. Really? And I suppose Satan gave this specimen a human brain with which to master human reasoning and language? Most Christians do not believe such nonsense and they are not in anyway being disbelieving of God’s word in doing so, because they understand that this was never intended to be taken literally as the Creationists would have us believe. By the way Creationists can’t have it both ways, they can’t make an exception for this storey not being literal historical fact and then try and argue that Genesis 1 & 2 are literal historical fact! A similar argument can be made for the storey of Eve being formed from one of Adam’s ribs. The Creationist has to have this as literal fact, which is all in my view a huge disservice to the Bible and to God’s Holy Spirit who inspired it.

Genesis 3 is asking us to appreciate that we are fallen creatures in that we can sense that we are not naturally able to live up to how we know we should and, as St Paul famously cries in Romans 7, “O wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from the body of this death?” Yes as Genesis 3 implies and Romans expounds ‘death has spread to all creation’. This is a literary way of saying that mankind has the potential of eternal life with ‘Creator Father God’, but unless we in our time grasp the offered hand of God’s grace we will be doomed to an eternity without God, which Genesis pictures as death (‘the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die’). However as the rest of Scripture indicates this death is actually a living death, not extinction, as atheists would have us believe.

By the way this eternity without God (elsewhere described as ‘hell’) is not something that the Creator of the cosmos wants to impose on any creature ‘as a punishment for them not worshipping God’ (as some Christians and atheists have depicted it). No, no, no! God ‘is love and in him there is no darkness’- the mystery is that in creation God has limited himself to the consequences of our choices, even though it pains him eternally to see any one of us choosing to exist independent of him. But if we choose eternally to exist independent of God, God is not going to force us a change! And this independence is one of separation from other people as well as God and all by our own choice – it is a terrible prospect, but not one God imposes on us. Ah, but when I die I can then change my mind. Oh, but when you die time ceases for you to change your mind in! Eternity is not time continuing as it does here. This is something beyond our comprehension, because we are time-bound and can’t think of anything that is meaningful without the existence of time.

Hence we have the good news in Genesis 3 that ‘the seed of man will one day bruise the snake’s head’. This allegorical revealed prophecy from God is fulfilled in the sinless life of Jesus Christ. He has defeated all the powers of personified spiritual darkness and provided the means to save us from the eternal hell of our self-exclusion from God’s presence and purpose in this life and the next.

To produce unsustainable theories and argument based on scientific or literary reasoning, in order to defend Genesis as God’s word against an apparent onslaught of atheistic thinking, is in my view not only doing a big disservice to Genesis which does not need this kind defence, but is also going against the whole tenet of God’s revelation, which is to win over atheistic man to the great wonder of who God is and of mankind’s destiny. We need Genesis in order to find our destiny and to understand the developing biblical theme of relationship to the eternal uncreated God, which comes from God’s burning desire to win over all mankind to his heart of eternal love.

To be working with God in this, Christians do not need to be on the defensive, but on the offensive! We do not need to twist logic or contort the literary context of Genesis because of a mistaken belief that it is vital to hold the view that the text of Genesis is precise history to which science will one day have to bow down! This is not what God’s revelation is about! God has given us Genesis to open up his revelation on the big eternal themes of who we are made for, why we exist, what we are, and where we are headed.