Memory Text: “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and by Your will they exist and were created” (Revelation 4:11, NKJV).
Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people. He said in a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water. Rev. 14:6-7
This angel with the everlasting gospel tells us to “worship Him who made the heavens, the earth, sea and the springs of water.” There is no gospel without the Creator God. There is no Christianity without the Christ through whom God the Father created the universe. Heb. 1:2 We covered this briefly in the lesson for April 15th, but we will cover it in greater depth here.
Ever since the long ages geology and then, shortly thereafter, Darwinism took over the scientific world, Christians have sought some way to harmonize these “scientific” theories with Bible Christianity and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christians want to be peacemakers, because our Lord said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Mat. 5:9.
Alas, it cannot be done. Those naturalistic theories fatally undermine the biblical narrative and the gospel of Jesus Christ. They were created in order to provide a rational underpinning for atheism, and they cannot be made compatible with the true origins God has revealed in his word.
A. The Implications of Lyellism[1] for Christianity
I call long-ages geology “Lyellism” after its foremost expositor, the lawyer-turned-armchair-geologist, Charles Lyell. Lyellism drastically undermines the Bible and biblical Christianity. The Bible states that the earth, with its plants and animals, was created in six days. Gen. 1:1 - 2:3; Ex. 20:11; 31:17. If Lyell was correct, however, the plants and animals were created over the course of almost 600 million years. That is a big difference. Lyellian geological theory could not possibly be farther from the biblical teaching.
We tend to forget that God created the world in six days. God foresaw this tendency and told us to remember it. He hallowed the Sabbath as a memorial to His creation. “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating he had done.” Gen. 2:2, 3 (NIV).[i]
After the Exodus from Egypt, when God was teaching the Israelites His laws, He used the manna to teach Sabbath observance. One day’s worth of manna was collected each morning, but it would not keep overnight. Ex. 16:15-20. On the sixth day, however, the Israelites were to collect two day’s worth, and it would keep overnight and throughout the Sabbath day. Thus, they did not need to collect manna on Sabbath morning, and those who went out to collect it found none. Ex. 16:5, 6, 22-30.
In the fourth of the Ten Commandments, God commands us to observe the Sabbath:
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Ex. 20: 8-11 (NIV, emphasis added).
God states within the commandment itself that the Sabbath is a memorial to the creation week. This would have been a remarkably dishonest thing for God to do if the world had been made over the course of hundreds of millions of years, rather than in six days.
The uniqueness and importance of the Ten Commandments cannot be overemphasized. Accompanied by thunder and lightning, God descended to Mount Sinai and audibly spoke the Ten Commandments within the hearing of the entire congregation of Israel. Ex. 20:1-21; Deut. 4:10-13. God Himself inscribed the Ten Commandments in stone tablets. Deut. 4:13; Ex. 31:18. God did not take these extraordinary measures with any other of the laws and regulations He gave to the Israelites. Although Moses, in indignation at Israel’s idolatry, smashed the original stone tablets, God commanded him to chisel out two more tablets, upon which God re-inscribed the Ten Commandments, again with His own finger. Ex. 34:1, 28; Deut. 10:1-4.
The new tablets, called the tablets of the Testimony, were placed inside the Ark of the Testimony. Ex. 34:29; 40:20; Deut. 10:5. The ark of the Testimony, also called the Ark of the Covenant, was a wooden box overlain with gold, with a solid gold lid, called the mercy seat or atonement cover. Affixed to the lid on each side were golden sculptures of angels, or cherubim, with their wings overshadowing the middle. Ex. 25:10-22.
The ark was the most sacred article of furniture in the sanctuary. Only the Levites were allowed to carry it, one man was struck dead for touching it without authority, and seventy men of Beth-Shemesh were slain for looking inside it. Deut. 10:8; 2 Sam. 6:6, 7; 1 Sam. 6:19.
The ark was placed in the most sacred compartment of the sanctuary, the Most Holy Place. Ex. 26:33, 34. The visible manifestation of God’s presence, the glory of God that some rabbis called the “Shekinah Glory,” was just above the ark, between the cherubim. Ex. 25:22; Lev. 16:2; 2 Sam. 6:2; Psalms 99:1; Ezek. 9:3. Only the high priest was allowed to look upon the ark, and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement. Even on the Day of Atonement, the high priest could not enter without incense and the blood of a sacrifice. Lev. 16.
To summarize, the most sacred compartment of the sanctuary, the Most Holy Place, contained the most sacred article of furniture, the Ark of the Testimony. Above the Ark dwelt the visible glory of God, and within the Ark were the tablets of the Testimony. The tablets contained the Ten Commandments, in the middle of which is the Fourth Commandment. The Fourth Commandment contains God’s statement, written by His own finger, that He created the world and all its creatures in six days. But if Lyell was correct, God’s statement, at the very center of the Hebrew religion, is at best a practical joke.
The symbolism of the sanctuary services is clear. Sin, the broken law, has resulted in man’s alienation from God, with death as the inevitable result. 1 John 3:4; Rom. 4:15, 6:23. The blood of Christ is the only sacrifice that can secure mercy and atonement with God. 1 John 2:1, 2; Heb. 9:11-28. This is the very heart of Christianity, its core doctrine. The broken law creates the need for the atonement of Christ. Whatever denigrates the law also denigrates the need for the atonement. A Lyellian interpretation of the strata leads to the conclusion that the world was not created in six days. Therefore, the commandment to observe the Sabbath as a memorial to the six-day creation is void. This is how Lyellism nullifies part of the law and, to the same extent, nullifies the atonement.
Lyellism directly conflicts with the Bible regarding Noah’s Flood. Chapters six through nine of the book of Genesis contain a description of the events leading up to the Flood, the Flood itself, and its aftermath. All humanity, all the land animals, and all the birds, with the exception of those on Noah’s ark, were destroyed. Gen. 7:21-23. Jesus Christ attests to the historical reality of the Flood. Mat. 24:37-39; Luke 17: 26, 27 (“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the Flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the Flood came and took them all away.”) Peter attests to the reality of the Flood, as does the author of Hebrews. 2 Peter 2:5; 3:5, 7; Hebrews 11:7. After the Flood, God made a covenant with Noah and the animals that He would never again destroy the world with water. The rainbow is the symbol of this covenant. Gen. 9:8-17.
But Lyellism denies that a worldwide flood ever occurred. If Lyell was correct, the Flood story, Noah, his ark, and God’s covenant sealed and symbolized by the rainbow, were all invented out of whole cloth, and should not be understood as factual or historical.
Lyellism also seriously erodes the doctrine of the Fall. The Bible teaches that death entered the world because of Adam’s sin, with the resulting fall of the human race. Rom. 5:12. (“[S]in entered the world through one man, and death through sin”). The Bible teaches that death entered not only the human race, but also the entire creation, as a result of Adam’s sin. Rom. 8:18-22.[ii]
The sedimentary strata show man at the top, and the entombed remains of a large variety of animals far down into the crust of the earth. If interpreted according to Lyellian assumptions, the strata show that death reigned for hundreds of millions of years before man ever appeared on the scene. Thus, in the Lyellian system, death, as a general phenomenon, cannot have been caused by the fall of mankind.
This was noticed early in the Lyellian revolution. American geologist and clergyman Edward Hitchcock, writing in 1840, stated:
The general interpretation of the Bible has been, that until the fall of man, death did not exist in the world even among the inferior animals. For the Bible asserts that by man came death (1 Cor. 15:21) and by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin (Rom. 5:12). But geology [Lyellism] teaches us that myriads of animals lived and died before the creation of man.[iii]
If death is not a result of the fall, then it must be part of God’s plan—part of the creation that God declared “very good.” (Gen. 1:31.)
The Bible also teaches that the animals were created to eat grass and other vegetation, not each other. “And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” Gen. 1:30 (NIV, emphasis added). In the earth made new, the animals will not prey on each other or on man. Isaiah 11:6-9. (“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb . . . the lion shall eat straw like an ox. . . . They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.”) If all animals were created herbivores, and in Heaven will again be herbivores, the predatory nature of animals must be a result of the Fall.[iv]
If Lyell was correct, however, nature was “red in tooth and claw”[v] long before Adam sinned. The dinosaurs provide many examples of meat-eating predators. Tyrannosaurus rex had powerful jaws packing sixty teeth, the exposed portions of which were six inches long, sharp, and serrated. In a single bite, T. rex could snap off a chunk of meat weighing five hundred pounds.[vi] T. rex was one of a group of carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods (“beast foot”).
A disturbing picture of God emerges if one accepts Lyellism. God claims to have created the world in six days and destroyed it by a universal Flood, neither of which is true. He placed the Sabbath, a memorial of the six-day creation, at the center of the Ten Commandments, despite knowing the world was not created in six days. If one accepts Lyell, the Bible is also wrong in teaching that sin caused violence and death. These things existed for many millions of years before man was created. If the lion is indeed to lie down with the lamb in the Earth made new, it will be a marked departure from the order of God’s original creation. For the Lyellian, not as much was lost by the Fall as Christians had always believed, and therefore not as much has been redeemed by the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Lyellism severely damages the integrity of biblical Christianity.
B. The Implications of Darwinism for Christianity
In this discussion, Darwinism does not mean “change over time,” diversification and speciation within the basic types of animals, or small evolutionary changes sometimes called “micro-evolution.” As used in this chapter, the term Darwinism means the larger claims of Darwinism—the microbes-to-man theory of evolution, in which a cell assembled itself, breathed life into itself, and then evolved into ever higher and more complex life forms. Most importantly, Darwinism means that man evolved from the apes and was not specially created by God.
From beginning to end, the Bible claims that God created the heavens and the earth,[i] that God is the creator of the entire universe,[ii] that God created the animals,[iii] and that God created man in God’s own image.[iv] If the Bible is wrong in these claims, it is not a trustworthy witness, and none of its other claims are credible.
Kurt Wise convinced himself of this by conducting a remarkable experiment. Wise had become interested in science at a young age and, by the time he was in the eighth grade, aspired to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. But he soon began to wonder whether the Darwinism and Lyellism of modern “science” were consistent with his deeply held faith in Christ and the Scriptures through which he had come to know Christ. To test the prominence of the doctrine of creation, Wise took a new Bible and a pair of scissors, and began reading and cutting:
Beginning at Genesis 1:1, I determined to cut out every verse in the Bible that would have to be taken out to believe in evolution. Wanting this to be as fair as possible, and giving the benefit of the doubt to evolution, I determined to read all the verses on both sides of a page and cut out every other verse, being careful not to cut the margin of the page, but to poke the page in the midst of the verse and cut the verse out around that. In this fashion, night after night, for weeks and months, I set about the task of systematically going through the entire Bible from cover to cover. Although the end of the matter seemed obvious pretty early on, I persevered.[v]
At the end of the experiment, there was not much left of Wise’s Bible. It fell apart in his hands as he tried to lift it. “I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible.”
Wise chose to believe in the veracity of Scripture. He did not give up his dream, however, and eventually earned that Harvard Ph.D. All through the many years of formal education at institutions steeped in Darwinism, Wise has remained a biblical creationist. He now teaches at Dayton, Tennessee, the site of the famous Scopes trial, at a college named after William Jennings Bryan.
If its foundational teaching on creation is wrong, the Bible is impeached beyond any hope of rehabilitation. There is no reason to believe it the inspired Word of God. There is no reason to treat it differently than any other ancient literature. We would sadly have to agree with Charles Darwin that the Scriptures are “no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus.”[vi] If Darwinism is true, the Bible has no better claim to our time than Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. It is merely literature to which the educated should be exposed.
Those Christians who would so casually discard the doctrine of creation do not seem to appreciate its centrality to the core doctrines of the faith. It is central to the doctrine of Christ, because, first of all, Christ is the Creator. The opening chapters of Hebrews and the Gospel of John confirm that God created the world through Jesus Christ. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” John 1:2. “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” Heb. 1:2. The bible clearly teaches that Christ is God and was with the Father from the beginning, and the Father created all things through Christ. Yet if Darwinism is correct, the universe created itself, and Christ created nothing. Darwinism demotes Christ from His office of Creator.
Second, the doctrine of creation is central to the doctrine of Christ, because it is central to the purpose of Christ’s death on the cross. The central Christian belief—a doctrine not peculiar to any sect or denomination—is that Christ, through His atoning sacrifice as the Lamb of God, is the Redeemer of mankind.[vii] This is the sine qua non of Christianity. But why does mankind need redemption? Mankind is sinful and is in need of redemption because of Adam’s sin and the resulting fall of the human race.[viii] The Bible specifically teaches that Christ was the second Adam, who overcame where the first Adam failed.[ix]
But according to the basic tenets of Darwinism, there never was an Adam. Darwinism teaches that man evolved from lower primates. Since there was no Adam, Adam never sinned, and there never was a fall of mankind. Far from suffering the effects of a “Fall,” mankind has experienced a spectacular rise from bacteria to Beethoven, from microbe to Mozart, from single cell to Shakespeare, from ameba to Einstein. Although not created in the image of any god, mankind has somehow managed to separate himself from all other animals by developing self-awareness and civilization, with its government, religion, commerce, law, science, technology, art, literature, theater, philosophy, etc.
Since there never was a Fall, mankind does not need redemption or atonement. Christ’s role as redeemer of a fallen humanity is obliterated. One commentator on the relationship between science and theology put it this way: “The traditional [Biblical] view of redemption as reconciliation and ransom from the consequences of Adam’s fall is nonsense for anyone who knows about the evolutionary background to human existence.”[x] Since Darwinism destroys Christ’s role as Redeemer, it effectively destroys Christianity:
Evolution . . . contradicts the basic foundations of Christianity. As Leonard Verduin asserted, “in the place of the story of a ‘Fall’ has come the story of an ascent.” Christianity and evolution are diametrically opposed. Either our first parents were created in the image of God and experienced a fall into sin or they did not. If they did not, then why be Christian? Calvary most radically questions evolution. If there has been no fall, why would we need God to die in our behalf?[xi]
Those who would delete the first ten chapters of Genesis would fatally undermine the entirety of Scripture. The creation, the Fall, the plan of salvation, the sacrificial system—these are all laid out in the first ten chapters of Genesis. Without this foundation, none of the rest makes sense. Jesus pointed out that Moses’ writings were about Himself (Luke 24:25-27; John 5:39) and that faith in Moses’ writings was a prerequisite to faith in Himself: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” John 5:46, 47 (RSV).
Christ can still be a moral teacher and a moral example, of course, but Christianity consists of far more than morals and ethics. The field of ethics is open to anyone of any religious persuasion, including atheists and agnostics. Indeed, the eighteenth-century gentlemen who founded the United States believed that moral and ethical principles could be discerned without recourse to revealed religion; the truths of “natural law” were “self-evident” to men such as Thomas Jefferson. Atheists, agnostics, animists, ancestor worshipers, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Muslims, and Jews can be moral and ethical. To be a Christian, however, one must believe that Christ died to save fallen humanity. If there was no Fall, there can be no Christianity.
All attempts to reconcile Darwinism and Christianity founder on the doctrine of the Fall, a doctrine that, as Herman Melville noted, is “now popularly ignored.”[xii] Michael Ruse made an attempt to reconcile Darwinism and Christianity in his book Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?[xiii] Ruse notes that an essential component of Christian theology “is that humans are descended from a unique pair (monogenism). That part of the Adam and Eve story cannot be interpreted symbolically.” Having conceded that the Adam and Eve story must be taken literally for Christianity to work, Ruse admits that it “goes completely against our thinking about the nature of the evolutionary process. Successful species like humans do not pass through single-pair bottlenecks: there is certainly no evidence that this was true of Homo sapiens, a species which seems to have been well spread around the earth.”[xiv]
After returning to the subject later in the book, Ruse admits that there had to be a fall in order for Christianity to make sense. “In the course of evolution, there must have been a first moment of conscious moral choice. That is the point at which the ‘fall of humanity’ began and humans were estranged from that natural fellowship with God which should have been theirs, and from their natural ability to relate unselfishly to one another.”[xv]
But Ruse is once again forced to admit that although this is necessary to Christianity, it is not compatible with Darwinism:
If one is an evolutionist of any kind, then the Adam and Eve story must be modified in some respect. . . . the Garden of Eden scenario, with the lion lying down with the lamb, sticks in the craw of the evolutionist. And the whole business of an original, unique Adam and Eve goes flatly against modern evolutionary biology. . . . Is one supposed to believe that the parents of Adam and Eve—for they will have had such in the evolutionary story, if not in Genesis—were soulless or sinless or what? And what about their brothers and sisters, and the next generation of Homo sapiens, most of whom were not descended from Adam and Eve?[xvi]
“Obviously,” writes Ruse in his epilogue, “if you are a fundamentalist Christian, then the Darwinian reading of Genesis is going to give you major problems—insoluble problems, I suspect.” But all versions of Christianity have Christ in the office of Redeemer and mankind in a fallen condition from which he needs redemption. That is not “fundamentalism.” That is mere Christianity.
Those who believe that Christianity is compatible with Darwinism are not thinking the problem through to its logical conclusion. Stephen Jay Gould—who was not a Christian, but Jewish in ethnicity and Marxist in politics—claimed that there is no conflict between science and religion because they have separate, non-overlapping “magisteria,” or teaching domains. He wrote that, “science and religion should be equal, mutually respecting partners, each the master of its own domain, and with each domain vital to human life in a different way.”[xvii]
This sounds reasonable, but it is wrong. Christianity and “science” do have overlapping teaching domains, because they both teach on origins, and without its doctrine of origins, Christianity is a deracinated, senseless mess. Those who would avoid the conflict between evolution and creation by consigning science and religion to separate domains are condemning Christians to a kind of schizophrenia in which they are asked to believe scientific “facts” that are in gross conflict with their Christian beliefs.
Not all Darwinists pretend there is no conflict between evolution and Christianity. In fact, many are refreshingly honest about the conflict.[xviii] Will Provine, a Darwinist professor at Cornell University, has written, “As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.”[xix]
In a debate with Provine, Phillip Johnson stated it this way: “The implication of evolutionary biology . . . is perhaps not exactly that God does not exist. If God does exist, however, existing is about the only thing He has ever done.”[xx] Provine stated that Darwin developed the theory of natural selection with an expressly anti-Christian purpose in mind. “He believed that inventing the idea of natural selection was like committing murder. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was murdering the cultural tradition in which he had been raised, and in which Phil continues to live (rather belatedly).”[xxi]
Christians should not fool themselves about the atheistic implications of Darwinism. Before the triumph of Darwinism, atheism was a minority position among intellectuals, because atheists were forced to violate common sense by positing a self-created universe. Nineteenth-century intellectuals were anxious to substitute a naturalistic understanding of origins. By supplying the crucial biological thesis, Darwin paved the way for atheistic domination of intellectual life.[xxii]
Darwin was not a believer. Although he studied theology at Cambridge, he had lost faith long before he formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection. Interestingly, the false doctrine of an eternally burning hell was instrumental in turning Darwin away from Christianity. In his autobiography, Darwin wrote:
I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true: for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.[xxiii]
It certainly is, but Darwin was mistaken in believing that it is Scriptural.[xxiv] It is regrettable that Christians have preached this doctrine, maligning the character of the loving God of the Bible:
It is beyond the power of the human mind to estimate the evil that has been wrought by the heresy of eternal torment. The religion of the Bible, full of love and goodness, and abounding in compassion, is darkened by superstition and clothed with terror. When we consider in what false colors Satan has painted the character of God, can we wonder that our merciful Creator is feared, dreaded, and even hated? The appalling views of God which have spread over the world from the teachings of the pulpit have made thousands, yes, millions, of skeptics and infidels.[xxv]
The heresy of eternal torment made an atheist of Darwin, and Darwin has made atheists of millions of people. Christians should not say that doctrines do not matter, that only one’s relationship with Christ matters. Doctrines matter enormously because of the picture of God they portray, which bears on whether God is Someone people would want to have a close relationship with.
But if Darwinism is incompatible with Christianity, why is Christianity still so healthy in the United States? The answer is simple: most American Christians ignore Darwinism. A Gallup poll taken in November 2004 showed that 45 percent of Americans, the largest group, believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form within the past 10,000 years. Another 38 percent believe that God guided the process of evolution.[xxvi] Only 13 percent said they believed in evolution with no guidance or participation by God.[xxvii] This last position, held by only a small minority, is the position of “science” and the scientific community. These polling data, which have not changed significantly since Gallup began asking this question in 1982, are a source of frustration for Darwinists, who are constantly trying to increase public acceptance of evolution. Darwinists jealously guard their monopoly in the public schools, although 68 percent of Americans believe that creationism should be taught along with evolution in public schools.[xxviii]
The effect that Darwinism has had upon Christianity is best seen in Western and Northern Europe, where Christianity exists largely as a cultural heritage, rather than as a living religion, and opinion leaders are bitterly hostile to creationism.[xxix] Church is very sparsely attended, with fewer than 10 percent of the people attending church regularly, as compared to about 40 percent in the United States.
We are also seeing the effects of Darwinism in the liberal protestant denominations of the United States. These have yielded to the Darwinists, undercutting the foundations of their faith. Since the 1960s, they have suffered a precipitous decline in membership:
The most significant fact about the mainline Protestant churches in America in the past two decades has been the drastic decline in membership. This began in the 1960s and has continued to the present. . . . It is difficult to conceptualize the extent of the membership declines suffered by the mainline churches during the 1970s and early 1980s. Every week these denominations averaged a decline of over five thousand; this is the equivalent of mainline Protestantism’s closing one local church of almost seven hundred members every day for a decade and a half.[xxx]
Between 1965 and 2001, the Episcopal Church lost more than a million members, shrinking from 3.6 million to 2.5 million. Between 1970 and 1984, the Methodists closed 2,665 local churches, an average of nearly four per week.[xxxi] In a fifteen-year period between 1968 and 1983, the Presbyterians lost 25 percent of their members, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) lost 29 percent. Attendance was also down.[xxxii]
These churches’ repudiation of the doctrine of creation, which occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did not lead directly to the decline in membership. Rather, it contributed to a long process (arguably begun in the 18th Century by German “higher criticism”) whereby the authority of Scripture was eviscerated and pastors lost interest in biblical preaching.
The creation week and the Flood are unacceptable to modern, naturalistic “science” because they depend upon the supernatural, upon God’s miraculous power. But every other miracle in the Bible is just as unacceptable to science, for exactly the same reason. If we toss out the doctrine of creation because “science” doesn’t like it, we must soon jettison every miracle in Scripture. And that is just what happened in the mainline protestant seminaries, where naturalistic explanations were sought for every miracle in the Bible.
Throwing out its miracles robs the Bible of its power and spiritual sustenance. It compromises or destroys the most precious promises in Scripture. To choose one among many possible examples, the Bible teaches that those who have died in Christ will be resurrected with a new body, even if their ashes have been scattered to the winds.[xxxiii] Obviously, the bodily resurrection taught in Scripture is no less miraculous than the original creation. If God lacked the ability to create two of us in one day, how can He recreate millions of us at the resurrection? What is left of Christianity after the great truths concerning the creation, the Fall, the plan of salvation, Christ’s miracles, Christ’s redeeming sacrifice as the second Adam, and the resurrection from the dead, are all tossed out?
Seminary professors taught their students to be embarrassed about every miracle in the Bible. Since there is a miracle on almost every page, seminary-trained pastors soon lost interest in biblical preaching. By the 1960s, three generations later, the mainline protestant denominations were totally devoted to some form of social or political teaching, at the expense of religion.[xxxiv] As the Methodist writers quoted above describe it:
Our mission has been reduced to politics, our Social Principles mirror, to a great extent, the political opinions from one part (generally the left) of the secular political spectrum. When our church speaks, it speaks mostly in political terms rather than religious ones. The programs of many of our local churches appear to be a mix of activities from the Y.M.C.A., the Garden Club, and the League of Women Voters.[xxxv]
It is not difficult to imagine how this would adversely affect attendance. If politics is all a pastor has to offer, why not stay home on Sunday morning and watch Meet the Press?
By contrast, the more conservative protestant denominations—which have not abandoned miracles, the doctrine of creation, or biblical preaching—are relatively healthy and growing.[xxxvi] Obviously, many things other than doctrine play a role in church growth and decline; in fact, doctrine may not matter as much as other factors, such as whether the congregation is kind and loving. But for people who care about intellectual integrity, any compromise with Darwinism is extremely corrosive to faith, and renders plenary biblical faith impossible.
To summarize what we have learned in the last two chapters, Lyellism can be compatible with Christianity only if one accepts a special creation of man at the top of the geologic column. Even then, the Bible is drastically undermined because, (1) not all living things were created in six days, and thus the Sabbath commandment is something of a hoax, (2) death and predation were not caused by sin, and (3) the world-wide Flood described in Genesis never happened, and all references to it, including those from the mouths of Jesus and Peter, are misleading. Nevertheless, with those limitations, it is possible to be both a Lyellian and a Christian.
Modern Lyellism is for all practical purposes, however, inseparable from Darwinism, and it is not possible to be a Darwinist and an intellectually consistent Christian. If Darwinism is true, Christianity is utter nonsense. By natural selection acting upon random genetic mutations, microbes evolved by stages into humanity. The story is one of amazing progress from a lower to a higher plane of existence. There were no perfect “Adam and Eve,” no “sin,” and no “Fall.” Since there was no sin and no Fall, we have no need of a Redeemer. Death is a natural, necessary, and indispensable part of life, not the result of a fallen condition from which we need redemption. If Darwinism is true, any thought of Christianity being true is out of the question.
[i] Gen. 1:1; Ex. 20:11; 31:17; 2 Kings 19:15; 2 Chron. 2:12; Neh. 9:6; Job 38:4; Psa. 90:2; 102:25; 104:5; 115:15; 124:8; 146:5, 6; Prov. 8:27-29; Isa. 37:16; 45:18; 66:1, 2; Jer. 10:12; 32:17; 51:15; Acts 14:15; Heb.11:3; 2 Pet. 3:5; Rev. 10:6; 14:7
[ii] Job 9:6-9; 26:7; 38:31-33; Psa. 8:3; 68:33, 34; 136:5-9; Isa. 40:22, 26-28; 42:5; Amos 5:8; Acts 17:24, 25
[iii] Gen. 1:24, 25; 2:19; Jer. 27:5; Psa. 104:24-26.
[iv] Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:7; 5:1, 2; Deut. 4:32; Psa. 8:5, 6; 100:3; 119:73; 139:14, 15; Eccl. 7:29; Isa. 17:7; 45:12; 64:8; Jer. 27:5; Matt. 19:4; Mark 10:6; Acts 17:24-26; Heb. 2:7; I Tim. 2:13.
[v] Kurt Wise, in In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, John F. Ashton, Ed. (Sydney: New Holland Pub., 1999 (published in the U.S. by Master Books, Green Forest, AK), p. 330.
[vi] Darwin, Charles, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I, p. 278, cited in Clark, Robert T. and James D. Bales, Why Scientists Accept Evolution, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1966), p. 30.
[vii] Gen. 3:15; 4:3-7; 8:20; 22:8; Ex. 20:24; 24:4-7; Lev. 1-7; 16:1-34; 17:11; Num. 28, 29; 1 Sam. 7:9; 2 Chron. 29:20-24; 30:15-20; 35:1-11; Ezek. 6:9-20; 7:17; 8:35; Psa. 22; Isa. 53; Ezek. 46; Mark 10:45; 14:12; Luke 22:20; John 1:29, 36; Acts 8:32; Rom. 3:24-26; 5:10-11; 1 Cor. 5:7; 15:3; II Cor. 5:18-19; Gal. 1:3-4; 4:4-5; Eph. 1:7; 5:2; Col. 1:13, 14, 19-22; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6; Titus 2:13, 14; Heb. 2:17; 9:11-28; 10:10; 1 Pet. 1:18-20; 1 John 2:2; 4:10; Rev. 5:8-13; 7:13-17; 12:11; 19:6-9; 21:22-27
[viii] Gen. 3; 1 Kings 8:46; Psa. 51:5; 130:3; 143:2; Prov. 20:9; Eccl. 7:20; Isa. 53:6; Hos. 6:7; John 8:23, 24; 1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:12; Eph. 2:1-3; 1 John 1:8;
[ix] Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:21, 22, 45-49
[x] Baldwin, John T., Creation, Catastrophe, & Calvary, (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000), p. 108, quoting Karl Schmitz-Moormann, president of the European Society for the Relation of Science and Theology.
[xi] Seventh-day Adventists Believe . . ., A Biblical Exposition of 27 Fundamental Doctrines (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1988), p. 92.
[xii] Herman Melville, Billy Budd, (New York: Signet Classics), p. 17
[xiii] Ruse, Michael, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
[xiv] Ruse, at 75, 76.
[xv] Ruse, at 205.
[xvi] Ruse, at 209.
[xvii] Gould, Stephen Jay, “Dorothy, It’s Really Oz” Time, 154:8, August 23, 1999. Gould expanded on this theme in the book, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999). Gould viewed religion as part, along with philosophy, art, and literature, of “the magisterium of ethics and meaning.” (p. 62). But beliefs about ethics are only part of religious beliefs. Most religious beliefs have to do with the ultimate nature of reality—the existence of God, His character, His nature, His provision for mankind, the extent to which He has revealed Himself to mankind through His word and through His creation, the sinful, fallen nature of mankind, God’s grace shown to mankind, God’s desire for mankind to live in a sin-free, disease-free, death-free world, whether there is an afterlife, what happens to a person when they die, whether there is a heaven or a hell, etc. These are the main questions with which religion is concerned, not questions of ethics. In fact, ethical issues tend to be far more susceptible to reason and logic—and hence to a broad social consensus—than purely religious issues. As some of his critics noted, Gould defined religion in a way that is unrecognizable to the religious.
And what about “meaning?” Gould was willing to cede questions of “meaning” to the magisterium of religion, but the meaning of life is different if we evolved from monkeys than it is if we were created in the image of an eternal and omnipotent God. If we were created, our purpose is to glorify our Creator; if we evolved, our purpose is . . . well, who can say? If science decides whether we evolved or were created, then meaning is within the magisterium of science, not the religious magisterium.
[xviii] See, e.g., Jacob Weisberg, “Darwinism and Religion: Quit Pretending they’re Compatible” Slate, August 10, 2005 “That evolution erodes religious belief seems almost too obvious to require argument. It destroyed the faith of Darwin himself, who moved from Christianity to agnosticism as a result of his discoveries and was immediately recognized as a huge threat by his reverent contemporaries. . . . evolutionists should quit pretending their views are no threat to believers. This insults our intelligence . . .”
[xix] Provine, Will, “No Free Will,” in Catching Up with the Vision, Ed. By Margaret W. Rossiter, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) p. 123.
[xx] Debate between Phillip Johnson and Will Provine at Stanford University on April 30, 1994. See http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or161/161main.htm. During the debate, Johnson states, “This is the fourth time that Will Provine and I have met in debate, . . . so I feel qualified to say where we will tend to agree and disagree during this debate. First, where we agree. The modern neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is fundamentally inconsistent with any meaningful theism—with any meaningful God who acts as creator of the world.”
[xxi] Ibid. Ariel Roth cited an even more pointed statement made by Will Provine:
“Scientist work closely with religious leaders to fight against the introduction of creationism into the classrooms of public schools. Liberal religious leaders and theologians, who also proclaim the compatibility of religion and evolution, achieve this unlikely position by two routes. First, they retreat from traditional interpretations of God’s presence in the world, some to the extent of becoming effective atheists. Second, they simply refuse to understand modern evolutionary biology and continue to believe that evolution is a purposive process.
We are now presented with the specter of atheistic evolutionists and liberal theologians, whose understanding of the evolutionary process is demonstrable nonsense, joining together with the ACLU and the highest courts in the land to lambaste creationists, who are caught in an increasing bind. Evolutionary biology, as taught in public schools, shows no evidence of a purposive force of any kind. This is deeply disturbing to creationists. Yet in court, scientists proclaim that nothing in evolutionary biology is incompatible with any reasonable religion, a view also supported by liberal theologians and religious leaders of many persuasions. Not only are creationists unable to have their ‘creation science’ taught in the schools, they cannot even convince the court system that evolution is in any significant way antithetical to religion; thus, the courts are effectively branding their religious views as terribly misguided. No wonder creationists (somewhere near half of the population!) are frustrated with the system and want equal time for their views, or at least to be spared bludgeoning with evolution.” William B. Provine, Academe 73(1):50-52 (a review of Edward J. Larson’s book Trial and Error: the American Controversy of Creation and Evolution (Oxford University Press)) as cited in Roth Origins: Linking Science and Scripture (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1998) p. 26.
[xxii] Bethell, Tom, “Darwin in the Dock” The American Spectator, June 1992, quoting from a Phillip Johnson speech to the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in Illinois.
[xxiii] Ibid. The passage was at first omitted from the published work, but in 1958, it was brought to light by Darwin’s granddaughter. Although Darwin went to Cambridge with the intention of becoming a clergyman, he soon abandoned this ambition and lost faith in the Bible. “But I had gradually come by this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos [sic].” In his letters, Darwin describes a long intellectual process in which he gradually lost faith in Christianity. “Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress.” Darwin, Charles, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I, pp. 277-278, cited in Clark, Robert T. and James D. Bales, Why Scientists Accept Evolution, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1966), p. 30-31.
[xxiv] “Hell” is not a place, but an event that takes place at the end of time. Matt. 13:39, 40; Matt. 16:27; Rev. 22:12. “Hell” is the destruction by fire of the unsaved after the millennium of Revelation. Rev. 21:7, 8; Rev. 20:7-9, 14, 15. The entire earth is purified by fire. 2 Pet. 3:10-12. The destruction of the unsaved is complete; they do not live on and on. Matt. 10:28; Mal. 4:1-3; Psa. 145:20; 37:20; 21:9; Isa. 47:14; Ezek. 28:18, 19. Terms like unquenchable fire and eternal fire do not mean that the fire burns on and on. Compare Mark 9:45-48 with Jer. 17:27; Matt. 25:41 with Jude 7. “Hell” is prepared for the devil and his angels; God does not want any of us to be lost. Matt. 25:41; 2 Pet. 3:9; Ezek. 18:32.
[xxv] Ellen White, The Great Controversy, p. 536.
[xxvi] This group makes the mistake of believing that strong evidence supports Darwinism. In fact, the case for Darwinism is based on philosophy. It is what you’re left with to explain the creation if you deny, a priori, the existence of God. If you believe, as this group apparently does, that there is a God capable of guiding evolution, there is no reason to believe in the Darwinian origin myth in the first place.
[xxvii] The Gallup Organization, which reports that, “The public has not notably changed its opinion on this question since Gallup started asking it in 1982.” One change is that, since 1997, the totally atheistic position has inched upward from 10% to 13% of the population.
[xxviii] The Gallup Organization, as reported by ABC News. See, also, Laurie Goodstein, “Teaching of Creationism is Endorsed in New Survey,” The New York Times, August 31, 2005, citing a poll conducted by July 7-17, 2005 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, stating “nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.”
[xxix] In 2002, when it became public that Emmanuel City Technology College in London was teaching creationism as part of its curriculum, astonishing hatred poured forth from the British press. “My academic colleagues across the Atlantic have to waste large parts of their first-year biology courses trying to put right the damage done by the educational Taliban who now rule all over the United States,” wrote Steve Jones, a professor of genetics at University College London. “British youngsters are now being fed subsidised untruths about the nature of science,” he wrote. “It is easy to dismiss such people as clowns or cranks, but they are dangerous.” Commenting on the two-million pounds donated by an English businessman to found the school, Jones ranted, “Now we know the price of ignorance . . . That seems a pretty good bargain at just a couple of grand a kid. You get a new crop of innocent minds to poison each year and, with plans to set up yet more schools with the same funding, stupidity will soon be available wholesale.” “Creationism is anti-science and it is an abuse of children's burgeoning intellect to teach them that it is as credible as evolution,” said Keith Wood, president of the England’s “National Secular Society.” Prime Minister Tony Blair defended Emmanuel College: “I think it would be very unfortunate if concerns over that were seen to remove the very, very strong incentive to make sure we get as diverse a school system as we properly can.” London Telegraph, March 22, 2002. But critics feared that “Mr. Blair's enthusiasm for ‘faith schools’ will result in more of this kind of nonsense being taught in our education system.” Sarah Cassiday, The Independent, March 19, 2002. In fairness to the mother country, similar things are said in the U.S. whenever it is suggested that American public schools give equal time to some form of creationism or intelligent design, although the tone is usually not so hateful and vitriolic.
[xxx] Willimon, William H., and Robert L. Wilson, Rekindling the Flame, Strategies for a Vital United Methodism.
[xxxi] Ibid.
[xxxii] Ibid. See, also, Dave Shiflett, Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity (Sentinel, 2005); Thomas C. Reeves, The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity (Free Press, 1996); Dean M. Kelley, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion (Mercer University Press, 1986, 1995); Colleen Carroll, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola, 2002);
[xxxiii] Job 19:25-27; Matt. 22:30; Acts 4:2; 23:6-8; 24:15, 21; John 5:28, 29; 11:23, 24; 1 Cor. 15:12-23, 35-58; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17; Phil. 3:20, 21; Rev. 20:4-15
[xxxiv] See, e.g., Earle E. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1954, 1981), pp. 425-428, 443-448.
[xxxv] Ibid.
[xxxvi] See, e.g., the sources listed in note 23, above. This discussion leaves out the Catholic Church, whose numerous pronouncements on origins are varied, often ambiguous, and tailored to the different concerns of different audiences. But it is important to note that Protestants and Catholics are in a different position with regard to Darwinism. Since Luther’s day, Protestants have claimed the Bible as the sole authority for their doctrines and teachings. Even if Sola Scriptura has often been more aspiration than actuality, Darwinism, which destroys the authority of Scripture, is a terrible blow to the vitality of Protestant Christianity. The authority of the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, is derived primarily from its own traditions and claims. In the Roman system, it is the church that confers authority on Scripture, not vice versa. Thus, Darwinism is far less threatening to the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, there have been very prominent Catholic creationists, such as Alfred Watterson McCann and George Barry O’Toole. Michael Behe, an important figure in the “intelligent design” movement, is a Roman Catholic.
[1] The term Lyellism is stylistically preferable to the ponderous Uniformitarianism. Neither Darwin nor Lyell invented the theories that made each famous. But what Darwin did for evolution, Lyell had previously done for uniformitarianism: he argued the doctrine in such a compelling way that all opposition in the scientific community was swept aside. Darwin would have been the first to acknowledge that if there is a “Darwinism,” there should also be a “Lyellism.”
[i] A year is the time it takes the earth to circle the sun, a day the time it takes the earth to revolve on its own axis, and a month is the time it takes the moon to pass from a particular phase (e.g., full) back to the same phase, averaging 29.53 days. By contrast, the week has no natural reason for existence; it exists because God established it at the creation. Atheistic regimes have thus sought to displace the weekly cycle. For example, French revolutionaries invented a calendar in which the months were divided into three ten-day cycles, and all the days were renamed. See, Schama, Simon, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), pp. 771-774.
[ii] “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Although the phrase subjected to frustration seems vague, the phrase bondage/slavery to decay/corruption implies that the creation is subject to disease and death. The creation is not subjected to disease, death, and natural catastrophes as a result of its own choice but as a result of man’s sin. See John T. Baldwin, Creation, Catastrophe, & Calvary, (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000), pp. 112, 113.
[iii] Hitchcock, Edward, Elementary Geology, (Amherst, Mass: J.S. and C. Adams, 1840), p. 218, as quoted by John T. Baldwin, Creation, Catastrophe, & Calvary, (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000), p. 111.
[iv] “While they remained true to God, Adam and his companion were to bear rule over the earth. . . .The lion and the lamb sported peacefully around them or lay down together at their feet.” Ellen White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 50; “God gave our first parents the food He designed that the race should eat. It was contrary to His plan to have the life of any creature taken. There was to be no death in Eden.” White, Spiritual Gifts, pp. 120, 121.
[v] Alfred Lord Tennyson In Memoriam (1850)
[vi] Dowswell, Paul, John Malam, Paul Mason, and Steve Parker, The Ultimate Book of Dinosaurs, (Bath, UK: Dempsey Parr, an imprint of Parragon, 2000), p. 31.
[vii] Wilford, John Noble, The Riddle of the Dinosaur, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 241.