Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution Part I

Hi Folks,

So several weeks back I read a book by Karl Giberson titled Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. Here are my pensees on it...

What I've Discovered:

Traveling the road I’m on - I call it the theologically endowed brick road - I have been discovering more and more that less and less educated Christians, (professionals of some type: scientist, theologians, philosophers et cetera) believe the earth to be much older then the conservative number of 6,000 to 10,000 years.

At first I thought it was just the nuts on the fringes of Christianity who believe in such things has "the Gap theory" or the "Day-Age theory". Ever since one guest preacher came to our church when I was a teenager and strung up bed sheets across the platform, filled with colorful images of an entire "pre-Adamic" race of beings, and a "story-line" to match.

But now I’ve discovered that such "theories" are not uncommon. As a matter of fact, what I’m coming to learn is that by-and-large the only people who still believe the earth to have been created sometime within the past 10,000 years are the "uninformed" average folk (who happen to make up the bulk of the population), or a few blind-faith and often laughing-stock theologians [i.e. Norman Geisler], who make public proclamations that aliens are demonic manifestations; thus losing all credibility within the academic community.

But other Christians, many who are well respected in the academic community (e.g. Greg Boyd, William Hasker, Hugh Ross, Francis Collins, Karl Giberson and Thomas Cahill) believe the earth to be much older then 10,000 years. Ever since the Age of the Enlightenment when the sciences such as geology and archaeology began to point to an "old" earth, Christians have been attempting to reconcile these "facts" with the Bible, and thus sprang into existence two new "theories" among the elite: the Gap Theory and the Day-Age theory.

Both of the aforementioned views seek to explain how it is the earth can be much older then the chronology of the bible allows for, while at the same time holding to an interpretation of Genesis that presents a Creator God and the exclusiveness and fall of the human race (and the kosmos - cosmos).

Then, to the bafflement of my mind, I have discovered that there are even Christians who believe in Evolution! Above I mentioned six men; of them one holds to the Gap Theory (Greg Boyd), and one holds to the Day-Age Theory (Hugh Ross), but the other four are evolutionists: William Hasker (Philosopher and author of Triumph of God Over Evil), Francis Collins (world renowned scientist and author of The Language of God), Thomas Cahill (Historian and author of How the Irish Saved Civilization [I love this book]), and Karl Giberson (professor of physics and author of Saving Darwin, who’s book this blog is about).

Where I'm Coming From:

Allow me to state explicitly my position before I get on with my critique of Giberson’s book:

As a Conservative Christian I have always read Genesis as a literal telling of the creation account. But in recent years I have shifted from a Conservative to a Post-Conservative approach to theology (and other areas). What this means is that while Conservatives are often marked by their slow (if ever) moving or accepting of things contrary to what they have always believed (i.e. traditions); a Post-Conservative Christian is one who is open (sincerely so) to accept and embrace other views if those views can be better substantiated.

For example; when I was young I tried hard to "figure out" scientifically how God created the earth in six days - it was a great mystery to me. Today my approach to the first chapter of Genesis is far more fulfilling. Rather then view it as a literal telling of a historical event, I have come to be persuaded by the evidence that Genesis (chapter one) is actually an ancient Jewish poem several layers thick with meaning! For example, in the first three verses the Trinity can be spotted and the motif of the world (good creation, fall, prevenient grace, redemption) can all be seen within those verses. The rest of the chapter unfolds with a description of a God who fills what he separates; you’ll notice that what God separated in the first three days He fills in the latter three respectively. I can read the passage literally in the sense of the Reformers (the sense of reading it literally as it was meant to be read - i.e. Divinely inspired poem several layers thick with meaning), without searching under every rock for a rational (or irrational) explanation on how God separated the light from the darkness without there being yet any sun or moon.

This does not detract from a "young earth" which God created in "six days" climaxing with the creation of man and subsequently a fall. All I’m suggesting is that the writer of Genesis never intended to give details to the "how" of creation, only that God is the creator, that he did it in six days resting on the seventh and that he created anthropos (Adam or Mankind) in His image. The primary purpose for the Genesis account was not to give us a historical or scientific account of creation; the authors concern was to tell us something about GOD! If we lose focus of this fact we can easily become bogged down in the "how" of the Genesis account; and lose sight of the "why" which is a far more pertinent question.

Furthermore, there is something amiss with the chronology given in the book of Genesis and throughout the bible: Several years ago I pulled out a calculator and some blank charts and decided to graph out the chronological record of the bible to determine how old the earth was. After several days work I was excited to be done, it was surprisingly easy and I was shocked that no one had done it before, for I and I alone knew the exact year God created the heavens and the earth - I was fully prepared to receive my Nobel Prize. Then, both to my humility and my joy, I discovered that someone else had in fact calculate the age of the earth using the Biblical time line; a mathematician of the Renaissance Era (Bishop James Ussher, 1581-1656) has calculated the date of creation to be in the year 4004 BC (Sun. Oct. 23 to be exact); I must have done something right because my math came out to be the same year.

Herein lays the problem: according to the timeline, the Great Flood occurs about two thousand years after creation, thus separating Noah from Jesus only by two thousand years. So how could the Flood have occurred in the year 2000 BC (estimated) if the Pyramids in Egypt were built sometime around 2700 BC - seven hundred years earlier. Egyptian civilization flourished unbroken from 3000 BC to the present day, the flood must have occurred prior to 3000 BC if Noah’s descendents are the settlers of the Nile as the Genesis account says.

It is for reasons like these that most "young earther’s", such as I, refer to the age of the earth as being between six to ten thousand years old (probably closer to the latter).

So because I recognize "gaps" within my own system (of the creation account), and because so many well respected and well educated Christians have embraced an "Old Earth" theory of some type, and because many of these Christians are reflective and god-fearing men, I have decided to open my mind up to the possibility that the earth may in fact be much older then I have always believed (that’s the Post-Conservative in me speaking).

Having said that, I will not be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine either, jumping from Gap to Day-Age to Creation to Evolution et cetera. If I am anything of the professions mentioned above, I am a reflective Christian, a lay theologian of sorts. Therefore, theology - not science which is, excuse the pun, forever evolving - is my primary concern. If I am to embrace a creation (or non-creation; i.e. evolution) model other than the one I have, it must be shown to be reasonable of course, but more importantly, it must uphold (or else further and reinforce) the key doctrines of Christianity; namely the doctrines revolving around Redemption.

The Gap Theory and the Day-Age Theory have been viable alternative creation models for Christians for over a century now, but for various reasons I have kept myself at arms length from both. There is (for me) way too much speculation involved in both models in an attempt to "make" the bible "fit" science. Perhaps in the future, through greater insight, I may one day embrace one of the two, only time will tell, but at this point I cannot.

Several months ago (when I was on the so called "problem of evil" subjected, reading such books as N.T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God and Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Prize winner Night) I read William Hasker’s philosophical brain-bender, The Triumph of God Over Evil. In it Hasker makes the forcefully pronounced statement more or less that "evolution is a fact and Christians just have to get over it and move on" (since I don’t have the book on hand I am only paraphrasing and I can’t give a page reference). To say I was shocked at such a statement is to understate my reaction: How does one reconcile Christianity with Evolution?

Awhile later while browsing a Chapters Bookstore I noticed a book fresh off the printing press titled The Language of God by a world renowned scientist named Francis Collins. The book began with a declaration of Collins claim to fame, unlocking the mysteries of the human genome, and secondly (making him almost infamous) declaring his belief in God and in Jesus Christ as his savior. I was proud to see that - finally - a respected and world renowned scientist would defend the cause of Christianity against other scientist. ‘We finally have a heavy weight on our side’ I thought to myself. But it did not take long to discover that I was easily misled (the hopeful are always easily misled) - Collins was an evolutionist and his book was about proving to Christians that evolution is a fact!

But how, I wondered, can someone reconcile the Christian doctrines, the exclusiveness of the human race and the doctrine of the fall of mankind into corruption, and the doctrine of the Creator Covenant Maker God, with Evolution?

It was in this context that I later came across a book by Karl Giberson (an Evolutionist and a Christian), titled Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. You can image my excitement; this is the very question I’ve been asking, How can one be a Christian and believe in Evolution? Finally I’ll get the answers I’ve been waiting for.

And so with an (all too sincerely) open mind, I cracked open the book and began to read Saving Darwin…

... to be continued.

Until then, remain in the faith.
Derek