01.029. SPECIAL STUDY ON EVOLUTION

SPECIAL STUDY ON EVOLUTION

Reference has been made occasionally on preceding pages to the theory of evolution. To discuss this theory comprehensively, in relation to Biblical teaching, especially to that of the Hebrew cosmogony (Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2:1-3), would require too many additional pages. Hence, I shall have to content myself with a somewhat cursory presentation of the subject.

I should like to say here, however, that no one knows—and it is doubtful that any man will ever know fully (1) how life itself originated, (2) the why and how of the life movement (what it is that causes cells to divide and thus to multiply, to differentiate in structure and to specialize in function), (3) the modusoperandi of heredity (how corporeal modifications or changes become incorporated into the chromosomes and genes, as indeed they must, in order to be transmitted to offspring), (4) the why and how of mutations (would not a sequence of mutations resulting in an ascending scale of complexity of existents surely presuppose a directing Intelligence?), (5) in short, how a new species emerges, or could emerge. (As Alfred Russel Wallace once said to his friend Darwin: Your theory may account for the survival of a species, but it does not account for the arrival of a new species.) These mysteries are all inscrutable phenomena of the total life process. As a matter of fact, the time element to which advocates of the theory resort puts it beyond the pale of strictly empirical proof or disproof.

Incidentally, the word “evolution,” like the word “nature,” belongs among the most ambiguous words in the English language. The most extreme form of the theory is that which is commonly called “materialistic” (“mechanistic” or “naturalistic”) evolution. This is the view that all species have come into existence fortuitously and as a result of the operation of resident forces in each lower species. This view is not only antireligious—it is unscientific. It is unscientific in that it ignores the order which enables us to designate the totality of physical being as a cosmos. The Greek kosmos means “order,” and order presupposes Intelligence. A science is man’s attempt to understand and describe the order which he finds in a given area of being. If order did not exist, there could be no science. Sheer fortuity (chance, purposelessness, etc.) simply cannot be reconciled with the order that is known by us empirically to exist. It has been rightly said that if man should ever discover beyond all possibility of doubt that the world he lives in is a world of chance exclusively, that discovery would mark the most tragic day in the story of his life upon the earth. It would denude the world and his own life in it of any possible meaning.

I suggest that each reader of this book secure a copy of the latest issue of Everyman’s Library edition (published by E. P. Dutton, New York) of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and read therein the Preface written by W. H. Thompson, F. R. S., Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa, Canada. Thompson states flatly that he does not consider that the evolutionists have proved their claims, I only wish that we might have the space here to reproduce the substance of this Preface. Since this we do not have, I urge the reader to secure this book and read the Preface for himself. Another work that I recommend, dealing with the evolution hypothesis, is that by Douglas Dewar, entitled The Transformist Illusion. This book may be secured from DeHoff Publications, 749 N. W. Broad Street, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Still and all, the other side of the coin, so to speak, should, I think, receive attention briefly here, for the benefit of students whose faith may have become gravely disturbed by the evolution dogma. There are many educated persons, I find, who in all sincerity hold that the theory, “if properly understood,” does not conflict with the Hebrew Cosmogny, if this in turn is “properly interpreted”; in a word, that there is no necessary conflict between the biological and Biblical accounts. These persons look upon evolution, within certain limits, as God’s method of creation. They base their position on the following arguments:

1. That the design of the Mosaic account is simply to affirm the truth that our world is the handiwork of the living God, who has only to order a thing to be done, and it is done. (Note the statement, “and God said,” which occurs repeatedly in the first chapter of Genesis.) That in short, the Spirit’s purpose in giving us the account is to emphasize the religious truth of the Creation without regard to the scientific aspects thereof. Hence, although we are told expressly that whatever God commanded “was done,” we are not told just how it was done. (Cf. Psalms 33:6; Psalms 33:9; Psalms 148:1-6; Hebrews 11:3.) Whether the Creative Process extended over seven week-days or seven (shall we say?) aeonic days is not a matter of special significance, as the same measure of Creative Power would have been prerequisite in either case. Therefore, the problem, according to those who hold this view, is not one of power but of method. (Obviously, Infinity in God has no reference to magnitude of any kind; rather, it designates the inexhaustibility of the Power which creates and sustains the cosmos.)

2. That there is nothing in the Genesis account to indicate that God spoke all living species into existence at one and the same instant; on the contrary, according to the account itself, the Creation extended over six “days” and a fraction of the seventh (note that God is said to have finished His work on the seventh day, Genesis 2:2).

3. That considerable indefiniteness characterizes the use of the Hebrew word yom (translated “day”) throughout the Genesis narrative. E. G., in Genesis 1:5; Genesis 1:16, it means “day light”; in Genesis 2:4, it is used for the whole Creation Era. Moreover, (1) there was no actual measurement of time in connection with the first three “days”: chronology had its beginning on the fourth “day”; (2) the “evening” that preceded the “morning” of Day One must have been in the sphere of timelessness; (3) as the distinguished commentator, Lange, puts it: “evening and morning denote the interval of a creative day,” the terms indicating respectively the first and second halves of this “day”; we cannot think of the usual evening and morning here, because the earth, and indeed our entire galaxy, did not become astronomically arranged until late in the entire process; (4) God Himself is timeless (always He is I AM, Exodus 3:14), and His activity is timeless (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:2, 2 Peter 3:8); unlike men, and Americans especially, God never gets in a hurry; (5) finally, the account of the seventh “day” does not terminate with the formula, “there was evening and there was morning, a seventh day,” such as occurs in connection with the account of each of the preceding six “days”: this indicates that the Father’s Sabbath is still going on. (This could well be what Jesus Himself meant when in defending Himself against the carping of the Pharisees that He was desecrating the Sabbath by doing works of healing on that day, He said, John 5:17, “My Father worketh even until now, and I work”; that is, the Father has been working works of benevolence throughout all these intervening centuries—His aeonic Sabbath—and now you cavil at me for doing works of benevolence on your little week-day Sabbath! Cf. Mark 2:27. From the arguments as given above, there are many sincere believers who conclude that the days of the Genesis cosmogony were aeonic (epochal, or geological) days, and not days of twenty-four hours each. I think it only fair to take note here of the fact that this view was held by several of the Church Fathers, even those who adopted the literal rather than the allegorical method of interpreting Scriptures, as, e. g., Ephrem of Edessa, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, et al.) (See the book, Evolution and Theology, by Ernest C. Messenger, published by Macmillan, New York, 1932.) On the basis of this exegesis, of course, there was ample time to allow for progressive developments—by means of secondary causes, that is, what we call “natural laws” or “laws of nature,” which are in fact the laws of Nature’s God—claimed by modern science. From the instant that God spoke out, saying, “Light, Be!” (Genesis 1:3) to the instant when the Three, in Divine Consilium, decided, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26), the stretch of time was indeed ample for all the eras that may be claimed by geology, pleontology, and other contemporary sciences. To the foregoing account of the basic tenets of what is sometimes called “Theistic evolution,” sometimes “Christian naturalism,” I should like to add the following personal observations:

1. It must be admitted that one of man’s most common errors is that of trying to carry his puny concepts of time over into the sphere of God’s timelessness. God’s timelessness is Eternity. Cf. Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:18—“the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

2. There are philosophers and theologians who take the position that at certain stages in the Creation, God, by direct action (that is, by primary, as distinguished from secondary, causation) inserted new and higher powers into the Cosmic Process, the first above the inanimate world (matter-in-motion) being the life process (cellular activity), then consciousness (the product of sensitivity), and finally, self-consciousness (person and personality). Obviously, these are the phenomena which mark off, and set apart, the successively higher levels of being as we know these levels empirically. On the basis of this theory, it is held that even though variations—both upward (progressive) and downward (retrogressive)—by means of resident forces, may have occurred on the levels of plant life and animal life, the actualization of first energy-matter, first Life, first consciousness, and first personality, must have been of the character of special creation. (The French naturalist, Cuvier, 1769–1832, held that the archetypal forms of all species were direct creations.) (It is significant, of course, that whereas the Hebrew verb bara, translated “create,” and signifying a primary creation, that is, creation by Divine Thought without the use of pre-existing material, occurs in Genesis 1:1; Genesis 1:21; Genesis 1:27 of the Genesis account, the verb asah, translated “make,” and signifying a fashioning—reducing to order—of previously created material, is found elsewhere in the account: in Genesis 2:3, the verbs are used together, to signify the completed Creation.) Surely unbiased persons will agree that no theory has ever really bridged the gap between the inanimate and the animate, or that between the brute and homo sapiens.

3. Again, the Genesis account of Creation is closely linked up with the Old Testament doctrine of the Sabbath. In Genesis 2:1-3, we have what is called a pro-lepsis, that is, an explanatory connecting together of two events widely separated in time, as if they had occurred at the same time. God rested, we are told, on the seventh “day,” after finishing His creative work on that “day.” But He did not sanctify the seventh week-day as the Jewish Sabbath until after the Exodus. (For other cases of pro-lepsis, see Genesis 3:20, and Matthew 10:2-4). It is crystal clear that the first observance of the week-day Sabbath occurred, when the Procession reached the wilderness of Sin, on the eighth day of the eight-day period described in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus. (It is inconceivable that the Procession would have been on the march, as we are told explicitly that it was, on the first day of this eight-day period, for this would also have been a Sabbath, had the institution been in effect at that time. But the law of the Sabbath forbode the people to do any work whatever, even to kindle a fire or to leave their habitations on that holy day (Exodus 16:29; Exodus 31:14-15; Exodus 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36); hence marching on that day would have been a flagrant violation of the divine command.) Not too long after, the Procession reached Sinai, and there the positive law of the Sabbath was incorporated into the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:8-11). In Deuteronomy 5:12-15, we are told expressly that the weekday Sabbath was set apart by divine authority to be observed by the children of Israel as a memorial of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage; hence, its observance must have been inaugurated after that deliverance had taken place, that is, after the Exodus. The Sabbath was an integral part of the Decalogue, and the Decalogue was the heart of the Mosaic Covenant. In Deuteronomy 5:4-22, we find Moses repeating the Commandments, including the command to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath; in Deuteronomy 5:1-3 of the same chapter, we find him stating positively that God had not made this Covenant with their fathers (the patriarchs), but with the generation that had been present at Horeb (another name for Sinai), and with their descendants to whom he, Moses, was speaking on that occasion (just before his own death and burial). (Cf. Galatians 3:19. Here the Apostle tells us that the Law (Torah) was added, that is, codified, because of the growing sinfulness of the people under no restraint but that of tradition. All these Scriptures account for the fact that we find no mention of the Jewish Sabbath in Genesis, that is, throughout the Patriarchal Dispensation. What, then, was the purpose of the inspired writer (Moses, Matthew 19:7-8; Luke 16:29-31; Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44; John 1:17, etc.) in correlating the observance of the weekday Sabbath by the Jewish nation with the “day” of God’s rest from His creative work? The answer is obvious: it is to explain why the seventh day was selected to be memorialized instead of any one of the other six days. We have in Genesis the reason why the particular day was chosen; we have in Deuteronomy what the day was chosen for, that is, what it memorialized. In a word, the Genesis account is to inform us that the seventh day of each ordinary week was sanctified as a memorial for the Jewish nation because that was the great (aeonic?) day on which God rested from His creative activity “in the beginning.” Thus it may be contended, legitimately, it would seem to this author, that the extent of he time involved in these two instances is not any necessary part of the exegetical parallel. (As clearly indicated in the New Testament, Christian assemblies were held on the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day, as a memorial of the Resurrection. Cf. Mark 16:9, Acts 20:7, 1 Corinthians 16:1-2, Revelation 1:10, etc.).

4. Although the Bible is not a textbook of science, and was not intended to be such, still and all the extent to which Biblical teaching and contemporary scientific theory are in harmony is little short of amazing. This is especially true of the Creation narrative. The order of Creation as given in this account is as follows:

Day One: energy, light, matter-in-motion. (Contemporary physics holds that the first “physical” energy must have been some form of radiant energy. Moreover, the transmutation of energy into matter, and of matter into energy, is a commonplace in our day.) Day Two: atmosphere (“firmament,” literally, “expanse”).

Day Three: lands and seas, and plant life (“each after its kind”).

Day Four: the beginning of the measurement of time, that is, chronology. (Plant life had probably cleared the gases from around the earth, and so the heavenly bodies came into view for the first time.) Day Five: the water and air species. (The current theory is that animal life began in the water.) Day Six: land animals, man and woman.

Day Seven: consummation, and rest. This is precisely the order of creation envisioned today by Science. Moreover, we have here a remarkable example of the adaptation of means to ends, and of the adaptation of nature to man and his needs. Light or radiant energy necessarily came first; light and atmosphere necessarily preceded animal life; and all subhuman orders necessarily preceded human life (to provide food, shelter, clothing, medicine, etc., for man). (Note also the correspondence between the picture of man in Genesis 2:7 as a mind-body unity (“a living soul”) and the organismic (psychosomatic) approach to the study of man that is characteristic of modern science.) Again, I call attention to the little book, Man Does Not Stand Alone, by the distinguished scientist, A. Cressy Morrison, published by F. H. Revell, New York. The thesis of this entire book is that of the adaptation of all nature to man and his needs, the vice versa of the overworked shibboleth of man’s adaptation to nature, his “environment.”) Now it is well-known that the existence of the Torah is traceable historically back beyond the beginnings of human science; in short, we have here a book, with its account of the Creation, which originated in pre-scientific times, and yet is amazingly in harmony with contemporary science. Indeed, I doubt that the time ever existed in which scientific thinking and Biblical teaching were in greater accord than in our own day. How can we account for this, other than on the ground that in Genesis we have divine revelation?

5. It would be well, I think, to list here the various interpretations of the Genesis account of the Creation, as follows:

(1) The mythical view, that the account is derived in large part from Babylonian, Indian, Hellenic, etc., folklore. We object to this theory, for the following reasons: (a) the transcendent purity (of the concept of God and His operations) of the Hebrew Cosmogony removes it far from any possible connection with these alleged pagan sources; (b) the fact that this account is attached to the history of the early life of man on the earth gives it historical support that all pagan mythologies lacked; and (c) there is not the slightest trace of myth in the Genesis account, and those who allege to the contrary do not know what the factors are which make a narrative really mythical. To realize that there is no mythology in the Genesis account all that one has to do is to compare it with the actual creation myths of the primitive and pagan peoples. Mythology was polytheistic. Its characters were personifications of natural forces (as distinguished from the pure incorporeal personality of the God of the Bible, Exodus 3:14), anthropomorphic creatures with sex distinctions and guilty of all the crimes in the category. No mythical, allegorical, or even metaphorical connotations are to be found in the Genesis Cosmogony.

(2) The ultra-literal view, that the Genesis account portrays the Creation as having been consummated in six days of twenty-four hours each. This theory is fairly well treated in the foregoing paragraphs. The vagueness of the time element in the account does, as we have already noted, open to some question this traditional view.

(3) The ultra-scientific view, which require the Genesis Cosmogony to conform to science in every detail. This is asking too much, however, for two reasons: In the first place, the Bible is not a textbook of science, was not even designed to be such; in the second place, science changes its basic concepts from age to age, and therefore no account of Creation could possibly be elastic enough to harmonize with all these changing views. The Biblical account of the Creation is designed to give us the truth about the nature, origin, and destiny of the person, and his position in the totality of being as the lord tenant of the earth which was created for his habitation (Genesis 1:28-30). The essence of this entire Cosmogony is that the Will of the living God is the constitution of our world, both physical and moral; that the Totality of the world we cognize by sense-perception and subsequent reflection is the embodiment of the Thought, Will, and Word of the Creator.

(4) The prophetic-vision theory, that the “days” referred to in the Genesis account were actually seven successive ordinary days in the life of the prophet Moses (cf. Deuteronomy 18:15; Deuteronomy 18:18; Acts 3:22; Acts 7:37, etc.) on which he was vouchsafed what might be called panoramic visions of the progressive stages of the Creation.

(5) The restitution or renovation theory, that we have described here what is called the Adamic renovation of our cosmos following a pre-adamic cataclysmic reduction of this cosmos to a chaos. This view goes along with the cyclical view of cosmic history (cf. Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1-2, etc.).

(6) The panoramic (cinematographic) view, that we have in the Genesis account a vivid unrolling, before the mind of Moses, of the process of Creation in its successive stages, and without particular regard to detail. (Dr. Strong calls this the pictorial-summary view.) One is reminded here of the words of Augustine, De Gen. ad Lit., 4:27, “The length of these days is not to be determined by the length of our week-days. There is a series in both cases, and that is all.”

6. I do strenuously object to the manner in which the theory of evolution has been built up into what might be called a dogma. Many modern textbooks are replete with assertions of, and statements about, what is designated the “fact” of evolution. This usually occurs when, from an author’s viewpoint, the wish is father to the thought. It is unfortunately true that when certain of the intelligentsia lose their faith in God, they avidly seek every possible device to bolster their unbelief. To say that evolution is a “fact,” however, is going entirely too far, especially in the attempt to establish a theory which is constructed for the most part by inference. Whether this inference is necessary inference or not, or just sheer conjecture, remains a moot question. Bold assertions do not cover lack of concrete evidence. Although I have never been able to bring myself to the point of accepting many of the exaggerated claims that are made by the evolutionists, yet after some fifteen years of dealing with college students, it has become my conviction that there is no real need for adding difficulties for them unnecessarily, or setting up and shooting at what may turn out to be straw men. Hence, the material of this section has been organized and presented with the end in view of helping the student to be strengthened in the most holy faith. If this can be accomplished without doing violence to the sacred text, on any subject that has been more or less controversial, I think it should be done. I cannot convince myself that acceptance or rejection of any theory of the method of Creation that recognizes and allows for the operation of Divine Intelligence and Power should ever be made a test of fellowship in a church of the New Testament order. This last word: The most telling indictment brought by W. R. Thompson (mentioned above) against those who have been singing so lustily paeans to Darwin is on the count of intellectual dishonesty. “A long-enduring and regrettable effect of the success of the Origin,” he writes, “was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculation.”“ “The success of Darwinism,” he goes on to say, “was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity . . . evident in the reckless statements of Haeckel and in the shifting, devious and histrionic argumentation of T. H. Huxley.” He points out the fact that even among scientists there is great divergence as to what evolution really is and how it comes about. Yet these men rally to the defense—and dogmatic promulgation—of a doctrine which they cannot even define. To this I might add that it has long been a favorite avocation of the self-styled “naturalistic” school of scientists—whose conclusions were warped by their predilections against any kind of religious faith—to belittle the philosophers of the Middle Ages for their “blind worship” of Aristotle. Yet I am sure that the medieval veneration of Aristotle was relatively mild in comparison with the uncritical devotion which so many scientists of recent vintage have given to Darwinism. Thompson concludes as follows: “Between the organism that simply lives, the organism that lives and feels, and the organism that lives and feels and reasons, there are, in the opinion of respectable philosophers, abrupt transitions corresponding to an ascent in the scale of being, and they hold that the agencies of the material world cannot produce transitions of this kind.” The fact of the matter is, as stated heretofore, that no one knows just how a new species emerges or could emerge. With these conclusions this writer is in full accord.