Is Theistic Evolution True?

Some believer’s actually believe that God used evolution to create life, so is theistic evolution contrary to Scripture?

Jesus and the Bible

Jesus did not believe in evolution. For one thing, this theory was not around in Jesus’ day and only came into existence as a theory in the last 160 years or so, but interestingly, the theory of evolution remains a theory and will forever be a theory because it cannot be tested by science, it is something that is not repeatable, and it is not able to be displayed as true in the laboratory. Jesus must have believed in creation because He asked the Pharisees who had been testing him, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matt 19:4), so God didn’t create Adam and Eve as amoebas or single-celled creations and wait thousands or millions of years for them to become Adam and Eve. Jesus said Adam and Eve were created, and it occurred in the week of creation (Gen 1, 2). That is not a “hands-off” creative act, but one where God instantly creates. Even the trees in the Garden of Eden were mature, already bearing every kind of fruit, so even in the Book of Genesis, it says God created and it was a seven-day week and we know this by the way it says after each day’s creation, “And there was evening and there was morning” (Gen 1:8), so there is no mistake about it in the Hebrew. These are literal days and not metaphors or, as some critics have said, Jewish poetic works. These critics either believe the Bible or they don’t, and it appears that many don’t believe in a literal seven-day creation, because a seven-day creation crushed any idea of God using evolution to do His creative work, and doing so over eons of time. The Bible says, God “spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:9). The Hebrew language of “came to be” does not allow it to be “and became” so it is an act of instant occurrence, and that’s the way the Psalmist puts it; “God spoke…and it came to be.” Not, God spoke, and it came into being or became. The NASB puts it best; “For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33:9). He spoke and it was done.

The Creator

The Bible speaks about the omnipotence of Jesus Christ, since He is God, and also of His creating all things and then holding everything together. The Apostle Paul wrote, “he is before all things, and in him all things hold together,” (Col 1:17), meaning Christ came before the creation, because He’s always existed, and in Him are all things being held together. There is no random, radical, rebel atom in the entire universe, because not even matter can go against the omnipotent will of God. The Apostle John tells us that Jesus “was in the beginning with God” (John 1:2), and “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3), so there is nothing that has been created that was not created by Jesus Christ. When God created the heavens and the earth, most Jewish scholars understand that the Hebrew had no word for “universe,” so the word “heavens” was used, but in meaning, the entire universe. Besides, God would not create the heavens and the earth, and leave everything else out. And since “heavens” is clearly plural, it could refer to the first heaven (clouds, birds, etc.), and second heaven (sun, moon, stars), and the third heaven (or heaven itself, although heaven is anywhere that God is). Plainly, God created all things, and Jesus, as God, holds all things He created together by His power, and to think that Jesus would wait for random mutations in organisms to finally become human, would make the creation of Adam and Eve and the Garden a story not to be taken literally.

The Theistic God of Evolution

If a person has a deistic view of God, I wonder what they do with the account of Adam and Eve. Jesus believed in the creation account, the creation of Adam and Eve, Noah and the flood, Jonah and the great fish, because He referred to them in Scripture. Jesus talked as if these were real people in real circumstances, and not in metaphorical language. Just as the psalmist says in Psalm 33:6 “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host”, and notice it wasn’t, “the heavens were being made” or “began to be made.” Nowhere in the Bible does it ever speak of a creative act as being a process. Just like the “faith once delivered” (Jude 1:3), it was an immediate act, completed immediately. No further action was necessary on God’s, man’s, or nature’s part. That’s exactly what the fossil evidence shows. Of the millions of fossils we have of man and ape, there should be many more millions of fossils of those who are transitioning into human-like creatures, yet the roaring silence is deafening to archaeologists. By the way, the “theistic god of evolution” doesn’t exist. He is a figment of their imagination. They might be worshiping another god and not the God of the Bible. Theistic evolution is on the same shaky ground as evolution is, because there are over 300 million species, and over 100 million fossils in public and private collections, yet there is not one single set of transitional fossils that show one species evolving into another. Not one! The theory of evolution has no objective evidence, thus it is not rational; it has no physical evidence so this makes the theory highly subjective in nature and so, theistic evolution, by connecting itself to evolution, also lacks evidence and rationale, and because of that, theistic evolution lacks credibility. I believe it also robs God of His glory as Creator.

Conclusion

If you stop and think about it, theistic evolutionists have an equation they use for the creation: God + Time + Chance = everything. It’s not much different than science view: Time + Chance + Space + Nothing = Everything. Lazarus’ resurrection is a great example of God speaking and having immediate results. God creates everything out of nothing. Evolutionist cannot explain the origin of matter because it is out of their field, so if they cannot explain the origin of matter, how could they ever hope to explain the origin of life? In the end, they are not really rejecting Creation but the Author of Life (Acts 3:15), both as Creator and as Lord and Savior. They know better (Rom 1:18-20). For believer’s, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb 11:3), and we have faith in God’s Word, so we know God created everything, and that matter is composed of things not seen by the naked eye (atoms). We have faith that God created Adam and Eve because the Bible tells us so. The Bible is God telling us. To make God out to be a world-maker Who wound everything up and now sits back to see what happens in contrary to God’s sovereignty, as time and chance don’t stand a chance against God’s decrees. It’s not like a heavenly crap shot, hoping everything falls into place at the right time, at the right place, and with the right circumstances. That is not Who God is. God is intentional in purpose and will, and nothing can stop what God has said will be.

More on this topic here: The Importance of the Creation vs. Evolution Discussion

Resource – Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), Crossway Bibles. (2007). ESV: Study Bible : English standard version. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tagged as: Creationism, Creator, Theistic Evolution