Been reading and pondering and arguing a bit on the web regarding the steady shift among Christians toward either theistic evolution or some form of progressive creation. It seems more and more University educated Christians who may have come from fairly Bible centered backgrounds are abandoning not only young-earth creationism, but even a broad view of Intelligent Design.
For the moment I won’t argue specific details regarding this or that specific element of the ID vs evolution debate, nor debate the meaning of specific phrases in Genesis 1-3. What I will question is the assumption those Christians who make this concession may have. That concession is that God used “natural laws” including natural selection as his method of creation. Here’s my main beef:
The “common-sense” reading of the text of scripture posits a Creator-God. I don’t want to go beyond that point for the moment. We are told that God existed “in the beginning” or even before the beginning. We are told God created the heavens and the earth. We are told He is the “beginning and the end”, implying, at least, He is not bound by time. We are told he will one day destroy the world by fire and bring into existence a New Heaven and a New Earth. If all this is true, then time, space, and the laws of nature in no way are binding on God. God created the laws of nature; else, those laws would be higher than God. This seems a fundamental assumption of belief in a creator.
Additionally, we are presented in both the biblical text and the long history of Christian theology with a God who works miracles. Again stop with that thought. This is a second fundamental point of the very definition of God in Christianity. By definition, miracles are events that are out of the ordinary, suspensions of the normal workings of nature.
Changing water to wine bypasses the normal frame of time it takes to grow grapes, crush them, package them and allow the process of fermentation to work. The laws of nature as we know them would have to be superseded in the miraculous acts of a God who is above nature. Healing of a man who is blind or lame from birth is a bypassing of the normal path to healing, or at least an acceleration of it. Curing someone of leprosy by a touch is a manipulation of reality that goes beyond the laws of nature. Again this is a fundamental implication of the very concept of a “creator-God”.
So the point is this: If this picture of a creator-God is accepted as a definition of the very term “God”, then to try to explain either a miracle or the acts of creation in terms of natural laws, to try to uncover “how God did it” in terms of natural law alone, is to miss the point. He would not need to follow the laws of nature to create the laws of nature. He would not need to because he would be the author of those laws and would be above them. To reduce what is by definition the “miraculous” to a set of natural causes and effects is to deny the very concept of the miraculous. And to say that a miracle could not take place is to say that God is not God.
The very starting point of Christian faith, “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things seen and unseen”, is a God who is outside of nature, who created nature, who is not bound by nature and who can at will supersede the laws of nature. This is the starting assumption of Christianity. God exists and created ALL THINGS.
But the starting assumption of naturalistic science is the assumption that all things MUST be explained according to NATURAL causes and only natural causes. Christians who accept this definition and use naturalism to explain “how God created” seem to saw off the branch on which they sit as professed Christians. The initial tenet of theism is seemingly set aside by those who accept the full naturalistic explanation of origins and try to wrap Christianity around it. At best, God is somehow behind the big bang, but every other event in the history of the universe is assumed to be fully explainable by natural processes alone. It may be theoretically possible that God “used” the mechanism of natural selection to “create”, but it seems to me that such a view also imprisons God in the straight-jacket of “natural law”. Did God “need” to use “natural processes”? The answer should clearly be “no”. The follow up is “why then have you chosen to believe He did use ONLY natural processes?” The answer usually comes down to something like, “because the science is irrefutable”. They have been convinced by the details and arguments of “science” that is naturalistic by definition.
The common reason for the closed definition is that once one appeals to something beyond nature as an explanation, that explanation is not falsifiable because no one can test whether the supernatural was in fact the cause. Such an allowance for something outside of nature would supposedly destroy science by appealing to things not testable by science. But does no one see that if the only explanations that can be offered for everything that exists are naturalistic explanations, then the central premise of naturalistic science can also never be falsified?
I fully understand how secular scientists who may be atheist or agnostic would insist on purely naturalistic explanations. That view is at least logically consistent. Agnostics and atheists say that they see insufficient evidence to believe in a God and thus conclude the universe is best thought of in terms of naturalism. That is consistent.
But is it consistent for those who describe themselves as Christians, who believe that God is the Creator, who apparently accept the first assumption that God created, to embrace a view that does not allow God to act outside of natural law? To do so, seems to me, is to in practical terms, give up the very first building block of the Christian faith, that there is a God who stands as creator and Lord over all creation. One may say he believes in God as creator with one hand, but then take away all God’s power to influence His creation with the other. It is to profess theism and believe theism irrelevant.
For if we believe that God can can create an entire universe, it is not at all logical to deny that he can work within that universe, to raise Christ from the dead, to turn water to wine, to heal the blind, deaf and lame. Why, if we believe God is big enough to accomplish the big bang, would we not believe that at least in theory, he could rain manna from heaven, part the water of the Red Sea , judge humanity by a massive flood and create human beings as unique individuals beginning with one man and one woman in a Middle Eastern garden? How did God cease to be God after the initial moment of creation?
It seems to me that this is a fundamental question. Yet so many have surrendered the initial statement of Genesis, the gospel of John and the Nicene Creed and yet still profess to be Christians. I do not see a cogent, logical reason for such a stance. If one accepts naturalism, then agnosticism is the logical position, not a wrapping of naturalism in the language of faith.
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