A theological approach. I am a theology and sociology major—not a scientist. The purpose of this post is not hold a scientific discussion on creation vs. evolution. I want to look at some of the theological principles that are implied in each view. I also want to explore a more nuanced view than what I feel is often presented by Christians and agnostic/atheistic scientists.

The comments of the Adventist pioneer Ellen White on the topic of education, science and the Bible have been a major inspiration to me. She claimed that while there might seem to be contradictions between Scripture and the natural sciences, these stem from our own ignorance and the misguided inferences drawn from the actual evidence. The Adventist emphasis on education and critical, independent thinking, and on nature and Scripture both being revelations of God, has encouraged a more independent exploration the issue for myself in my capacity as a theology and sociology major.

An inevitable question of faith. My first step is to acknowledge the vary obvious: I do not have all knowledge. As for all the truth claims that I cannot personally verify, test or comprehend, who and what do I fundamentally trust? Most of the so-called knowledge that each and every person possesses is handed down and based on trust, not personal observation. We trust our teachers, the journalists, the authors who wrote the books that we read, the professionals and experts, and we trust in society at large in various other ways. We trust others with our very own lives—doctors, bus drivers, pilots—the list goes on. No one can verify or reason out every piece of information that we come across. Our trust even extends to our own senses—what trust what we can see, hear, touch or understand. And sometimes we realize we cannot trust our own senses. At times we might critically question what we read or hear or see. We make pre-judgments of what seems likely to be true. The question of truth is inevitably tied to the question of trust, or faith—whether we are aware of it or not.

Following my life-changing spiritual experience as a teenager and my personal and academic studies as an adult (I hold a BA in theology, MPhil in sociology of religion), there has been no doubt in my mind: God is real. I also believe the Bible gives an account of God’s presence and work in human history. The Bible as a written work, although bearing marks of human imperfection, still bears the imprint of divine logic, power and meaning that has enriched my life tremendously, including millions of others’ throughout history.

Reasons to have faith in the Bible. The Bible has given a richness of meaning and hope to human beings over thousands of years. Prophecies uttered thousands of years ago concerning the Messiah, the world kingdom, and the end of the world, find and continue to find significant matches in the work of Jesus Christ and continues to do so in the social and political developments of the modern world. The messianic prophecies’ fulfillment in the life of Jesus, the prophecies of the world kingdoms found in the book of Daniel, and the prophecies of the end-times in the New Testament, are to me outstanding evidence of a divine presence and foreknowledge that can be measured and tested against the history books. More about this in another post.

Finally, the goodness, power and wisdom manifested in the life of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels stand as the greatest proof of the Bible’s genuineness. Jesus is simply outstanding and serves as an exquisite role-model for any human being, as he also has been for historical figures such as Martin Luther, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., Sir Isaac Newton, William Wilberforce, Leo Tolstoy, Nelson Mandela, Florence Nightingale, Blaise Pascal, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and many others.

For me, the most important questions to ask concerning the origins of life are therefore the following:

1. Firstly, what does the Bible say (and not say) about the origins of life?
2. How do scientific observations of evolution fit into the biblical worldview?

The creation account. It is evident that Jesus and the apostles referred to creation as a historical event (Mark 13:19; Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 11:8-9; 15:45; 2 Peter 3:5). Also, the Sabbath commandment and the seven-day week as provided in the Ten Commandments is explicitly undergirded by the creation account (Exodus 20:1-17). The repeated phrase “and there was evening and it was morning” in Genesis 1 seems to say that each day of creation was a literal day. However, the evidence of an evolutionary process in nature as documented by scientists is undeniable. The process of natural selection and change in species over time is observable today and is also seen in the fossil record. How does one make sense of these two testimonies—of the biblical record and the natural record?

Natural revelation. When I first began reading the Bible, I thought little of how it portrays God as actively working in nature, such as sending rain, feeding animals, making seeds sprout, and balancing the clouds in the sky (Romans 1:20; Colossians 1:13-17; Matthew 6:25-30; Psalms 104; Psalms 19:1-6; Psalms 147:7-9; Job 12:7-10). These, I thought, were merely poetic descriptions of God’s blessings. I did not believe that God literally was feeding animals, sending rain, sprouting seeds, and balancing clouds in the sky, but rather that since He created the world with its natural laws, He has caused these things to happen by themselves. (This is deism.)

It was, however, the insights of Ellen White that made me realize that this is not at all what the Bible is saying. In the Bible, nature is intentionally presented as being under God’s constant control. God is not just the first cause; He is portrayed as being constantly active in and through nature to keep it running, moment by moment. I realized that the assumption that God, after creating it, mostly doesn’t interact with our world is unbiblical.

The Familiarity Bias. What does it mean, then, that God constantly works in and through nature, as the Bible implies? I believe this means that the energy or fundamental forces by which nature operates should from a biblical standpoint not be viewed as blind, mechanical forces that are inherent to nature itself. Rather, these are God’s active energy! Scripture indicates that God is constantly and miraculously exerting His power and energy in accordance with set laws in order to uphold the universe second by second! That is an immense thought.

In Christian theology, the knowledge that nature imparts (natural science) is called natural revelation because it is a natural revelation of God to everyone. The ordered existence of the universe, the healing of a wound, the beating of the heart, the movement of the stars and planets in their set courses, all following ordered laws, are demonstrations of God’s genius and power. The Bible implies that these natural processes are no less miraculous than the resurrection from the dead. In Western thought, it is assumed that nature’s laws and fundamental forces are inherent to nature itself. But the Bible conveys another view—that nature manifests a divine and intelligent presence that is constantly active. The active energy pervading nature is God’s own energy!

According to the Familiarity Bias, humans tend to undervalue that which we are familiar with, even if it is really significant. People living in beautiful surroundings may not think much of their home, while tourists from all around the world come to see it. Perhaps the agnostic, mechanistic view of nature in modern science stems from us being so used to witnessing God’s work and presence moment by moment that we don’t recognize it for what it truly is—a miracle?

Natural selection. If God works through the laws that govern and uphold it (as the Bible indicates), this must also include in some way the observed law of natural selection, or “the survival of the fittest”. This law ensures the preservation and continuation of life in the face of environmental change. It testifies to the resilience and robustness of the life that God created. But natural selection is often understood in a way that is anti-biblical. How can it be understood from a biblical point of view?

I believe that when Christ (good) is described as triumphing over Satan (evil) in the Bible, this is by the law of natural selection. The principles of Christ (truth, love, unselfishness, omnipotence) are in the long term more viable or “fit” than those of Satan (falsehood, hatred, selfishness, impotence). Christ represents a life that is in harmony with God’s laws that govern the universe. Satan represents a life that goes against God’s laws. It is evident that it is not live eternally in a universe with laws that one rebels against. The principles of Satan may seem superior through pretense and falsehood and short-term thinking, but are ultimately and in the long run self-destructive because they in some way ignore or seek to bypass the law of consequences.

The law of natural selection is therefore not a blind mechanism driven by chance as some Christians argue. It is in essence the law of separation between good and bad that favors the good—a law that is necessary for the preservation of life.

While the law of natural selection does testify to the divine (the power and superiority of life), it also testifies to another power: The power of “unfitness”, decay and death. This, the Bible teaches, is not God’s doing or work. I’ll get back to this later.

Special revelation. God reveals Himself as an intelligent, active and powerful being through nature. But does this exclude the possibility of God choosing to reveal Himself in other ways? Of course not. Special revelation signifies in Christian thought the extraordinary or personal ways by which God manifests Himself. The scriptures written by prophets and apostles claim to be special and personal revelations of God to mankind. Christianity teaches that the clearest revelation of God is Jesus Christ, who is the incarnation of God.

Natural revelation (nature) and special revelation (the Scriptures, prophets, Jesus Christ) cannot contradict each other if they come from the same divine source. Then they must agree. While the natural processes such as natural selection are real and evident from scientific research, these mechanisms cannot be taken to contradict God’s word. If we are to take both natural revelation and special revelation seriously, the Genesis account and scientific observations must both be upheld as valid and true in their true sense and meaning. But the contested question is: What is their true sense and meaning? Let’s look at the creation account in Genesis.

God’s creative intervention. The central message that I find in the creation accounts of Genesis, and especially the second creation account (Genesis 2), is that animal and human life did not emerge by the ordinary laws of nature, but rather by God’s extraordinary intervention. The text details how God forms the man of dust, breathes into him the breath of life, making man a living nephesh, which is Hebrew for “soul” (Genesis 2:7). God also forms animals from dust (Genesis 2:19). God is presented as a personal being who, like a master artist, forms humans with His hands. These descriptions do not imply long natural processes kicked off by a distant God who leaves nature to run its own course. God’s personal creation of mankind seems to be the true sense and primary meaning and message of Genesis. God is a personal being, and we as personal beings are made in His likeness by His personal intervention.

God’s ordinary work through the laws of nature does not rule out the possibility that God can work in extraordinary ways. Humans have the ability to intervene and intelligently manipulate nature in order to produce a desired outcome. Should not the Creator of nature have this ability?

What Genesis does not say. Some Christians assert that the Genesis account addresses the creation of the whole universe. But they seem to ignore that the book of Job mentions that other beings already were in existence when “the foundation of the earth” was laid—namely, the “morning stars” and “sons of God” (Job 38:7, ESV). “Sons of God” are beings created by God, and are not necessarily angels; Adam is called a “son of God” because he was created by God (Luke 3:38). The Bible does not convey that the earth is the only inhabited world in God’s universe.

Another important point is that “the heavens” (Hebrew: shamayim) mentioned in Genesis 1:1, 2:1 and 2:4 evidently points to the sky that God creates on day two (Genesis 1:6-8). On the second day, God makes the raqia, which is the Hebrew term for “expanse” or “extended surface”—meaning the visible expanse of the sky as seen from the ground. God calls this expanse “heaven” (Hebrew: shamayim). This is how the creation account defines “heaven”. It does not refer to the whole universe as we understand it today; it refers to the sky as seen from the ground by ancient observers. It is true that the creation account implies by inference that God is the Creator of everything (which to us modern believers includes the whole universe). But the purpose of Genesis is evidently to give an account of the beginning of the world that we humans inhabit—not everything there is.

Genesis mentions a time period before the first day of creation when the earth was “empty and void” and covered in darkness (Genesis 1:2a). The creation week begins with the earth being empty and void, and God incrementally ordering the earth from chaos. The prophet Jeremiah echoes this starting point in his vision of God’s undoing of creation in the final judgment. According to Jeremiah, the earth will return to the state of being “empty and void” after judgment day (Jeremiah 4:23-26). As God created the earth from chaos, so will the earth be undone by God’s judgment and return (for a time) to chaos. There is a movement in the narrative back to “square one”. Jeremiah seems to have understood that the creation account begins with God ordering the earth from chaos—not with the creation of the whole universe.

Many hold the view that the creation account is as an allegory, and that each day of creation is not to be taken literally, but rather represents long periods of evolutionary phases. While there are many scientific arguments for a Darwinistic view, there seems to be one insurmountable difference between Genesis and Darwinism.

The role of death. Darwinism holds that death always has been a central part of life on this planet, since the very beginning. Darwin himself was not an atheist, but believed that God kickstarted evolution, creating all species by natural selection. In other words, he believed that God’s creative act initiated competition, suffering and the death of billions of organisms, creatures and animals along the way, culminating in the emergence of human beings.

The Bible, on the other hand, states on several occasions that in the beginning when God created our world, death and suffering did not exist (Genesis 2:17; 3:19; Romans 5:12-21). In Genesis, God pronounces His creation to be good seven times, seven symbolizing divine perfection. How does the Bible then explain the existence of suffering and death?

The apostle Paul states that God allowed nature to be subjected to decay and death because of mankind’s sin (Romans 8:20-21). In Genesis 3 is found the story of mankind’s fall into sin after being tempted by Satan. The pervasive idea in the Bible, is that God did not create a world with death and suffering; it was through mankind’s sin that death entered and became a part of our world (Romans 5:12-21). God allowed death to enter the world when mankind made the choice to start sinning. Death is the result of sin (Romans 6:23) because sin is breaking the laws of God that govern life. Death is, according to the apostles Paul and John, an enemy that one day will be destroyed by God (1 Corinthians 15:26; Revelation 21:4). Death did not exist in the beginning, and it will once again cease to exist. Here again is found a movement in the narrative to goes back to the beginning.

The teaching in the Bible that death is an enemy is at odds with Darwinism, which views death and suffering as an integral part of nature. Why does it matter?

A question of God’s character. This question comes with huge theological and moral implications. What is God’s character like? Is God the author of suffering and death? Is the suffering and death of humans and animals God’s invention?

In Genesis, the clear answer is no—suffering and death are not God’s creation. According to Darwinism, however, the answer is inevitably yes—God is indeed the inventor of suffering and death. Before mankind could make any moral choices, we and all creatures were, according to Darwinism, forcefully subjected to millions of years of competition, suffering and death at God’s good pleasure. (Again, Darwin was not an atheist but believed in God as being the First Cause of evolution when he wrote The Origin of Species.)

To claim that God is the source of suffering and death in our world not only undermines human free will, but is also presents God as unjust and absurd. Why would an omnipotent Creator who could create a perfect, suffering-free world choose from His own initiative to create world with suffering and death? This is what Darwin’s worldview implies. But such a God must ultimately be tyrannical.

To me, the question of our origins hinges on how each view theologically and morally makes sense of suffering and death. In the Genesis account, God is portrayed as wanting to spare humanity the pain of knowing evil; He forbids mankind from eating of the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:16-17). However, Genesis 3 recounts that mankind freely chose to disobey God and acquire this knowledge for themselves, thus making evil and its train of suffering and death a part of our world against God’s intent.

Jesus’ parable of the weeds. In the parable of the weeds recorded in Matthew 13, Jesus compares the world to a wheat field filled with weeds. He portrays evil as weeds that were planted, not by the farmer himself (God), but by an enemy (the Devil). Yet, to protect the good wheat from being uprooted, the farmer does not immediately uproot the weeds, but allows the weeds and wheat to continue to grow together. The lesson in this parable is firstly that evil is an intruder and was planted, not by God, but by an enemy. Secondly, it is that good and evil are now intricately and inseparably connected in our world. If God immediately removed all evil, some of the good would be harmed, just as plucking out the weeds would bring some of the good wheat with it. In order to spare that which is good, God waits for our world to mature and develop to the point where He can safely remove all that which is bad without harming the good. God is presented by Jesus as a Farmer that plants good wheat. God’s enemy, the Devil, is portrayed as an intruder and destroyer of God’s creation. This parable echoes the moral point of the Genesis account.

While the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection is an integral part of our world today, this law of survival must logically lay dormant if all “unfitness”, scarcity of resources, and mortality were fully eradicated from our world. In that case, there would be no competition or conflict, since there would be no threat, weakness or fear of death. Such was the world that God created in the beginning, according to Genesis, and such will the world be when God restores it, according to the book of Revelation. While the mechanism of natural selection indeed explains the immense diversity that has emerged over time, it seems morally incompatible with God’s character that natural selection should be God’s method of creating life. It goes against the entire Bible’s view on suffering and death.

The limitations of natural science. I have asked myself the following: Classically, uniformitarianism as as a scientific principle has been summed up as “the present is the key to the past”. Science interprets ancient rocks using the same physical laws and kinds of processes we observe now. Geological and radiocarbon dating methods are powerful, but they depend on assumptions about past conditions, rate constancy, calibration, and preservation. Those assumptions are often reasonable, but they are still assumptions and therefore should not simply be treated as dogma.

Genesis tells the story of a global cataclysm. It mentions human beings reaching an age of nearly 1,000 years before they died. These, Genesis states, were the nephilim (“giants”) living on the earth before the Great Flood (Genesis 5-6). I find it interesting that similar stories of a global cataclysm and of prehistoric giants are found in various religions, legends and mythologies across the world. Reports of giant humanoid bones were plenty in the 1800s; they have later all been dismissed as either hoaxes or misidentified animal remains. Modern science itself operates with the theory of a fateful disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs. These global descriptions of a catastrophic event that drastically changed our planet and life on earth raise questions concerning the scientific models that build on current processes seen in nature. Moreover, why should the history timelines held by modern science today be accepted as indisputable facts when they previously have been subjected to revision upon revision after discoveries of new evidence?

Perhaps the supposed conflicts between science and Scripture do not arise from the empirical evidence itself, but from the inferences drawn from the facts observed in nature? While the age of the earth is not essential to know, I believe it is possible and necessary for Christians to acknowledge both scientific observations and the Bible’s claims of creation.

Our moral instinct. Was God looking down at animals and humans killing and eating each other and fighting for survival when He in the beginning pronounced His creation to be “very good” (Genesis 1:31)? The Bible teaches that God is a morally perfect and good being, that death is not God’s invention, and that God will finally end all suffering and death and restore creation to immortality (Romans 8:20-21; Revelation 21:4). I think this narrative makes more sense morally, and it gives credit to the prevalent human instinct that suffering and death, even when it is so prevalent and natural to our world, is an offensive, disturbing and meaningless element.

Not causing anyone to stumble. The main moral point of Christianity is this: That God as our Creator is loving and just, that Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh, and that He worthy of our love and honor. While Darwin does give credit to God as the Creator, it is difficult to love his God because his God creates and wills suffering and death. The God of the creation account in Genesis, on the other hand, is not the author of suffering and death, but specifically seeks to prevent it, while also protecting human free will.

Christians should not cause anyone to stumble by entering into divisive arguments that distract people from the message of Jesus: That God is love. If Darwinism, however, inhibits people’s faith in God as truly good and loving, Christians should be the first to humbly and intelligently point out the important moral lessons found in the biblical creation account—that God did not create suffering and death. At the end of the day, I think everyone should thoughtfully consider whether having a precisely correct understanding of our origins really is necessary in order to be a good person like Jesus.

This is my testimony. What is yours? Feel free to share in the comment section below!