KSYC Program 

Anything Theistic About Theistic Evolution?

January 29, 2017 • KSYC 103.9FM Yreka, CA

The debate about creation vs. evolution has raged since Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. Because of the popularity of the evolution theory, today many evangelicals propose a mixture of the Biblical creation account and evolution, saying that God used the process of evolution to create human beings.

The Bible says that God created the universe out of nothing, and man and woman out of the dust of the earth. All of these God made in six days of creation. Evolution says that after a “Big Bang”—which happened on its own—life came into being, and this life evolved into fish, then birds, then horses, then apes, and finally into human beings.

How do we harmonize these two views, which is called theistic evolution? We don’t and we can’t! It’s absolutely, totally impossible, even if this world continues into the next 14 billion years, nay, into eternity. Someone please tell me how we could reconcile God forming Adam out of the dust of the ground and Adam evolving from the Big Bang. These two views are mutually exclusive of each other; one cannot believe the Scriptures as the inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God and at the same time believe in the evolutionary process.

According to the 2003 Cornell Evolution Project Survey of leading evolutionary scientists, 87 percent deny God’s existence and 88 percent reject life after death. This is why many theistic evolutionists are mere deists, believing in a god who created the world but is not sovereignly and actively involved in the evolutionary process, not even knowing how the process will turn out. Many of them also do not believe in a “good” creation, so that man was not perfect from the very start. Although well-known evangelicals support theistic evolution, it is not surprising when some of these advocates later abandon their Christian faith altogether, just as Calvin College Professor Emeritus Howard Van Til and (once-fundamentalist) paleontologist Stephen Godfrey did. Fence-sitting in the creation-evolution issue can be dangerous to one’s soul.

Those seminary professors and pastors who have gone into the evolution camp also end up questioning the historicity of the creation account, including that of Adam and Eve. Why would God need a historical Second Adam when the First Adam was just a myth? (Rom 5:12-19; 1 Cor 15:22, 45) And if the First Adam was a myth, then original sin is a myth, and Christ’s substitutionary atonement for his people is pointless.

Those who teach this mixture of creation and evolution do so only because they had surrendered to the pressure of atheistic science and are ashamed of being ridiculed. They want to have their cake and eat it too. A well-known seminary professor said, “If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult . . . some odd group that is not really interacting with the world.” He wrongly assumes that scientific data supporting evolution are facts.

Various theories about the origins of the earth have been proposed, but they all boil down into two opposing views: creation and evolution. Most creationists believe in a literal, 6-day/24-hour-a-day view. Augustine taught that God could have created the whole universe instantaneously with just one command, since he is Almighty and nothing is impossible for him to do.

Theistic evolutionary views mix creation and evolution. I’ll mention only two main views. The first is the gap theory, which was developed mainly for the purpose of accommodating the great ages of evolution. According to this theory, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” was only the initial creation of the universe. Then the various geologic ages followed, wherein evolution took places. But there was a cosmic cataclysm, destroying all life, leaving fossils everywhere. This is what’s described in Genesis 1:2 as “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” So according to this theory, the six days of creation was God recreating what was destroyed. The gap theory makes God either hapless or stupid. After he created the heavens and the earth, he was powerless to stop it from destroying itself. Or he was so foolish to let it be destroyed because he knew he could create the whole thing again.

Another theistic evolutionary theory is the day-age theory. According to its proponents, the six “days” in Genesis 1 are actually geologic periods occurring as hundreds of millions of years. This is why the earth is actually several billion years old. But how can a “morning” and an “evening” constitute hundreds of millions of years? If this was true, then all the plants and animals that evolved had to survive without light for hundreds of millions of years!

A view of Christianity that accommodates evolution, no matter how convincing it may sound, but if it contradicts Scriptures, must be rejected, because the Scriptures is our only ultimate source of authority and salvation. As Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, President of Westminster Seminary in California, affirms,

Scripture alone authoritatively interprets the biblical account of creation. The claims of modern science cannot determine the interpretation of the Bible… God created man immediately from the dust of the earth. Man did not evolve from lower animals.

This is why I am committed to the following points my denomination, the United Reformed Churches in North America, affirmed concerning creation in its 2001 Synod:

  1. God the Father Almighty created the heavens and the earth and all things visible and invisible.
  2. The Father created the heavens and the earth out of nothing.
  3. God gave every creature its shape and being.
  4. The creation and fall of man [into sin].
  5. The historicity of Adam.
  6. Man was created good, in a garden, and tempted by the devil, committed reckless disobedience.
  7. God’s words to the serpent in Paradise are noted as the first revelation of the Gospel.
  8. Adam plunged himself and his offspring by his first transgression into perdition.
  9. Adam’s fall into sin and our connection to it.
  10. God came seeking man when he, trembling, fled from Him.
  11. God created all things good in six days defined as evenings and mornings. This means that we reject any evolutionary teaching, including theistic evolution, concerning the origin of the earth and of all creatures.

“Theistic evolution,” therefore, is a very dangerous path to take, because it may just be a temporary midpoint in the migration from faith to unbelief. Or worse, a theistic evolutionist may be assuming he is a Christian, when in fact, he is not.

Evolution is man’s rebellion against God. If you don’t believe in a Creator, you are not accountable to him or to anyone. You can do anything you please to yourself and to others without considering that there is a God to whom you are accountable. If you are an evolutionist, think again. Your view has eternal consequences. The only way to be free from eternal punishment is to repent of your sins and believe in Jesus alone as your Savior from God’s wrath against your unbelief and rebellious life.

If you have any questions or comments about this subject, please call us on the phone number given at the end of this program, or go to our website: www.bigspringsurc.com.

Let us pray: Almighty God, may we listen to your warning against us who rebel against you by indulging in our own sinful, selfish, immoral, and unrighteous desires. Help us in our unbelief in you as the Creator of the world, and that we are all accountable to you; that all of our rebellious lives will be judged for eternity. Help us to believe and trust in your Son Jesus Christ as our Savior.

Now we praise you for the ample rain and snow this winter. We pray for the sick, for those who are actively looking for work, for the widows, for the elderly, for the dying, for those who have lost loved ones. We pray these things in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.

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