The "E" Word

Let’s talk about evolution. Since the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Christians have waged war upon what they consider the unholy spawn of Satan. Claiming that the Bible absolutely states that God created the earth in six days, Christians have generally proclaimed that the Earth is less than 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs existed, were awesome, and then disappeared in a matter of decades in which man partook, and that volumes of plate tectonics theory, zoological evidence, and archaeological finds documenting micro- and macro-evolution are tenuous at best, and at worst the result of a liberal conspiracy to kill God.

Most Christians assume that evolution and faith are waging a cosmic battle for legitimacy – that they cannot co-exist. I disagree. While I will not bother discussing all the evidence that impartial scientific studies have generated proving the existence of evolution or proclaim how a brief visit to the zoo confirms most of Darwin’s thoughts, I here present one theory that blends Genesis with Origin of Species that permits God to have used evolution to create our world. Take or leave it, just please don’t shoot me.

Dr. John Walton, an Old Testament professor at Wheaton College (Il.), and a few of his Ivy League colleagues who just happen to be experts in Ancient Near Eastern ontology literature came up with the theory of Temple Ontology a few years ago. It argues that modern Western Christians must read the Genesis creation story in light of the socio-literary context of the Ancient Near East. The rationale behind this is that the Old Testament Israelites, specifically the ancient generation for whom Moses penned the first five books of the Bible, functioned as a part of the Ancient Near East. (Abraham was a Sumerian. His sons and grandson interacted with proto-Hittites and proto-Babylonians. Their descendants lived for years as Egypt’s slaves.) This means that the ancient Israelites were cut from the same cloth as the peoples who surrounded them. In other words, while Israel’s religious beliefs may have differed from their neighbors’, all Ancient Near Easterners, Israelites included, probably shared the same literally stylisms, artistic expressions, knowledge of nature, and views of the afterlife. It is in this context, Temple Ontology Theory argues, that we must read the first chapters of Genesis.

According to Walton and his theory the Ancient Near East (Israel included) believed that things did not officially exist until they were “named” or “created.” For Ancient Near Easterners this meant that something did not exist until it was either given a purpose or its purpose became evident. This process of receiving/discovering purpose was called “creating” in ancient Hebrew. Here’s an example: Israelites did not think that the wilderness existed. They could see it, touch it, and – heaven help us – taste it if they wanted to, but to them it simply did not exist (i.e. it was not created) because it served no purpose whatsoever.

This example sets up my point about evolution and Genesis. According to Genesis, God “created the heavens and the earth” and day and night on the first day. On the second He formed the continents and brought forth plants. On the third day God created the sun, moon, and the stars. On the fifth day He created fish and birds. And finally on the sixth day God created animals and mankind. If we apply Walton’s theory to this timeline it fits perfectly within evolution and its sister theory, plate tectonic theory. Essentially, Walton argues that as the world’s development progressed over billions of years from the primordial days of Pangaea to the world as we know it (the continents formed and plant and animal life emerged in the seas and later spread to the land), each time something in His creation developed or evolved to the point at which it finally became what God intended it to be, He named it (i.e. He “created” it or gave it significance). Such a reading implies that as evolution ran its course God waited for the species to culminate. When they did (despite their existence for millions of years prior to that point), they officially came into being. When this happened God “created” them.

To summarize, evolution fits Genesis 1 perfectly in that after the continents became firm and capable of supporting life, life crawled out of the seas and took hold on the land. Once there it changed and developed until it became what God wanted it to be in its final form. When viewed in this light it is possible to see how either each day could be considered an era or epoch in billions of years of terrestrial history without offended anyone’s view of Genesis 1 or that God picked 7 special days over the course of billions of years of terrestrial history to create/act.