The Creation of Man (4)

So tonight, where we start with this particular study, is we're going to look at several views about the origin of mankind, which attempt to combine the biblical account with evolution and some of the ways in which that is done and the weaknesses and pitfalls dangers of that approach. So we're going to look at probably three or four different kinds of combination approaches. We won't get to it tonight, but we'll finish out this section on the creation of man by talking about scientific creationism or biblical creationism to kind of cap things off. And then we'll get started on a different topic related to man, and that is the nature of man. We have two parts, material, and material. We'll kind of flesh all that out. No pun intended. Okay, we're going to look at four views tonight, or as many as we can get into, of views that seek to combine evolution with the biblical account. The first one I want to mention is theistic evolution. And by the way, we try to treat this as a classroom setting. So I'll pause from time to time and ask if you have questions. Feel free to ask any questions. And then invite once you can answer them. I'm glad to facilitate that. We do try to, even though it's impuse, it's a little awkward. We have great discussion in here. So please, please feel free to do that. We're under no timetable necessarily. I mean, eight o'clock, but not as far as how many weeks we do this study. Theistic evolution, let me give a statement of the view first. It's meant by theistic evolution. Theistic evolution, as you can tell, theistic, theosis, the Greek word for God. So theistic means God evolution. So you can tell by that term, this is an attempt to combine something to do with God and a lot to do with evolution. Statement of view goes something like this. Theistic evolution teaches a rather conventional form of evolution. It basically is a form of evolution, but it tries to throw a little bit of Bible in there to make it sound respectable to Christians. So basically what it teaches is that Adam was the first real human being. So that's kind of, yay, at least there was a historical Adam. He was a biblical person. But you're not going to like how they got there if you really understand the biblical account. Because theistic evolution says that Adam, even though he was the first human being, we got to Adam as a result of a long evolutionary process. Evolution started just as a theistic evolutionist's teach. It started and life developed and evolved into various forms. There are complexity and so forth until finally, after millions, maybe billions of years, you've got the first man. Adam, when evolution finally produced a fully developed human, then God stepped in and placed in that fully developed human his image. And then Adam became man as we know mankind. That's theistic evolution. So you can tell they're trying to do some justice to the concept of God and bringing him into the picture somehow, but God is kind of an afterthought in theistic evolution. Basically, mankind develops just like evolution would teach. So obviously there's some problems with that view. Can you think of some? Any problems come to mind? Eve, that's a huge problem with this view. Where'd Eve come from? It has no way to account for Eve being made from Adam. And of course, the biblical account makes perfect sense. No way to account for woman in this view. Any other difficulties you can see? How would you get male and female out of that concoction? I'm not a theistic evolutionist, so I'm not sure. Does anybody who's more familiar with evolution, Byron? You have male female. OK, that makes sense from evolutionary perspective. I'm not saying Byron's an evolutionist, but he's a doctor who knows the science behind all this. So that makes perfect sense. That somewhere along the line there was a division and in the evolutionary development, one followed a female line, the other a male line. That's how that would have happened. OK, we're not going to pursue that. I think I get the picture there. OK, there are some other problems with theistic evolution. Let me just mention one other. And that is that the Bible says that man was made from the dust of the ground. God took existing elements and fashioned his body and breathed into him the breath of life. And in theistic evolution, theistic evolution has to take that as some kind of poetic reference to man coming up from the ground, developing from inorganic material. And so some kind of evolutionary development. Well, the biblical account is just a poetic attempt to describe how man evolved. That's a really far stretch to try to put that into the Bible. So theistic evolution, although it was popular 100 years ago or so, when evolution was sweeping the day and many Bible scholars were trying to figure out, oh, no, everybody's saying evolution is right. It must be how are we going to fit the Bible in there? It was one of the first attempts to do that. It's not held as much today. There are more creative options as we'll see in a moment. Any other questions or comments about theistic evolution? Microevolution? I'm not real sure. In the literature I've read, I don't see that term being used with it. Micro as opposed to macroevolution. I'm not sure, to be honest. I can't speak intelligently to that. Yes, Kenneth? It would have followed the normal evolutionary process from lower forms of life to forms of life that are more human-like, probably apes or monkeys or something like that. So it would follow basically the same evolutionary track. Okay, let's get to one that's a little more creative and a little more common among people that really try to include the Bible in their thinking. That is what's often called progressive creation or day-age theory because the day-age theory is part and parcel of progressive creationism. Basically, the statement of view is this. Progressive creationism basically teaches that evolution occurred as conventionally taught the development of lower forms of life into more complex forms of life. That God stepped in to bridge the gaps. Wherever there are gaps, what are popularly called missing links, how did you actually make that huge leap from one entirely different species to another? Well, that was where God stepped in and kind of kickstarted or jumpstarted the process to this new stage of development. He introduced into the evolutionary process creative energy to pass from one form to the next. In those gaps where there are no intermediate creatures that are seeing evolving half-a-half man, whatever, it's God that caused it to make that jump. That's progressive creation. A main part of that view is the day-age concept. In order for any of these theories to fit into evolution, one feature that is common is to adopt the evolutionary timescale. One thing that is pretty much consistent in all of these theories is they basically feel that science has proven the age of the earth to be billions of years old. That's a given and so somehow we've got to fit the biblical material into that. The most creative way they do it is to say that the days in the Bible are really long ages. They're not 24-hour days. They are long ages. Let me state the way the theories often stated will give some reasons why that's taught and then we'll talk about some objections to it. The statement of theory basically is that the days of the Bible actually correspond to the periods of earth history as demonstrated in the geologic timetable, the different ages as seen in the geologic timetable. Basically the word day is taken figuratively. Whenever the Bible talks about a day of creation, it really means a long period of time, ages of time. That's how you fit the millions and billions of years for evolutionary development into the biblical concept of six days. It really, in their view, means six long ages of time. There are reasons why that view is taken by people who want to somehow adapt the Bible to evolution. Here's the primary reason. People who believe in progressive creation or the day-age theory believe that geology and astronomy, basically those two disciplines. Geology, the study of the various layers of the earth, crust and so forth, and rock formations, they believe that geology and astronomy, the study of the heavens, have proven the earth to be billions of years old. They accept that. They accept that timetable. If you accept that timetable, then somehow you've got to fit the Bible into that. There's actually some wonderful writing being done in the last 20 or 30 years to show a more biblical approach, a scientific approach that fits the biblical data. There are other explanations for the geologic timetable, primarily having to do with the flood. The catastrophic events of the flood, as we'll get into later, not tonight, but probably next week, there's a better way to explain that biblically. One of my mentors at Grace Theological Seminary was Dr. John Whitcom. I actually served as his teaching assistant for a year. And Dr. Whitcom was the one who combined with Dr. Horus, Henry Morris at Virginia Tech, to write the groundbreaking book on this topic called The Genesis Flood.