For a short while, I fancied myself a theistic evolutionist. I realize now that I can’t really carry that label. First, I hate labels. Second, the one label I do want to carry is “Christian.” I don’t think being a Christian necessarily commits a person to a particular view about “evolution,” if that means simply that organisms change gradually over deep time and all of life shares a common genetic heritage. Those facts, it seems to me, are irrefutable. But I do think being a Christin commits a person to a particular view of humanity, and particularly of humanity in relation to God. We surely don’t know all the details of exactly what it means that God formed man “out of the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7) or exactly in what ways the Biblical references to “Adam” and the “Garden” are literary stylizations. But, fundamentally, I think being a Christian entails a theology that asserts (a) humans are in some way unique among the creatures of the earth; (b) humans at their root, in their first representatives created by God, had a special relationship of fellowship with God and each other; and (c) the first human representatives broke that relationship and this has affected all of us in relation to God, each other, and the rest of creation, ever since. This is what sets the stage for God’s relationship with Israel and for the cross of Christ.<\/p>\n
In this regard, I’m really troubled by Karl Giberson’s<\/a> summary on Steve Martin’s blog<\/a> of his forrthcoming book, “Saving Darwin<\/a>.” Now, I want to be careful here, because I haven’t read Giberson’s entire book yet. The book was blurbed<\/a>, with some reservations, by John Wilson, Editor of Books & Culture, whose judgment usually is sensible. Maybe some context will help, but, in his guest post, Giberson says this:<\/p>\n I suggest in Saving Darwin that we must abandon the historicity of the Genesis creation account. Adam and Eve must not be thought of as real people or even surrogates for groups of real people; likewise the Fall must disappear from history as an event and become, instead, a partial insight into the morally ambiguous character with which evolution endowed our species. Human uniqueness is called into question and we must consider extending the imago dei, in some sense, beyond our species. These are not simple theological tasks but, if we can embrace them, I think we may be able to finally make peace with Darwin\u2019s Dangerous Idea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To me, this is an important place at which Christian theology has to “push back” at science in dialectical tension. It seems to me that Giberson here advocates that we concede a central motif of the Christian story. I don’t think this is an “evangelical” issue; it seems to me to be a “Christian” issue.<\/p>\n If this is what it means to be a theistic evolutionist, I am not one. I’m not sure what that makes me — I respectfully reject young earth creationism, I think old earth day-age creationism isn’t fair either to the Biblical or scientific records, and I think much of the contemporary “intelligent design” debate — much, not all — just recycles William Paley’s theologically and scientifically discredited watchmaker arguments. Maybe a real synthesis and “peace” between “faith” and “science” in some respects simply is not achievable in this life. I don’t like it, but maybe a humble, respectful, but firm patience here is part of the “not yet” walk of faith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For a short while, I fancied myself a theistic evolutionist. I realize now that I can’t really carry that label. First, I hate labels. Second, the one label I do want to carry is “Christian.” I don’t think being a Christian necessarily commits a person to a particular view about “evolution,” if that means simply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,26,4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemology","category-science-technology","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-9s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}